Microsoft has announced that it will form a new "High Performance Computing team" that will dedicate efforts to produce a version of the Windows OS for high-performance computing, a move that is seen as a way to prevent further ramifications of Linux in the business and servers market.

For now, Linux has the upper hand, owing to its affinity with Unix--the OS environment the high-performance crowd is most comfortable with--and the open-source model, which lets users turn directly to source code for answers to problems. But a Microsoft product would theoretically integrate better with Windows desktop machines, and if the company can serve up an impressive offering, Linux could be in for a tussle.