Microsoft has acquired the technology assets of Interactive Supercomputing (ISC), an MIT HPC spin-out that specializes in parallel computing on the desktop. It says the move will bring together complementary technologies that help simplify the complexity and difficulty of expressing problems that can be parallelized. ISC's widgetry is supposed to enable faster prototyping, iteration and deployment of large-scale parallel solutions.

ISC CEO Bill Blake and his people will join Microsoft's New England R&D Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Blake will report to Kyril Faenov, Microsoft's general manager of high performance and parallel computing, part of its Server and Tools Division.

Plans are afoot to integrate ISC technologies into future Microsoft products. How and where is not yet clear.

Microsoft is taking ISC's Star-P software off the market - the latest 2.9 beta will not go to production - but Microsoft says it will support existing customers. At some point they'll be told to migrate.

The widgetry, which first hit market in 2005, was once described as the "world's first interactive parallel computing platform," and was used to code algorithms and models on a desktop using familiar tools and run them interactively on HPC clusters without reprogramming the applications for parallel processing. It supports Intel's latest clusters.

Microsoft didn't say what it's paying. ISC raised at least $18 million from folks like Ascent Venture Partners, Fletcher Spaght, Flagship Ventures, Rock Maple Ventures and CommonAngels as well as private investors.