Windows clusters are almost inevitable in many respects, said Dodds. This notion "of mass computing and very technical specializing computing teaming together, I think, is pretty evident," especially as researchers turn to low-cost commodity clusters to solve problems, he said.

"Without going into an open-source model, which I would never expect to see Microsoft necessarily do, they would develop products that will interoperate seamlessly" with the dominant open-source platforms, said Dodds.

William Kramer, general chairman of the Supercomputing conference and head of high-performance computing at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, said Gates' appearance is an indication of the growing awareness of supercomputing's importance. "The output of [high-performance computing] activities are no longer hidden behind a curtain, if you will," he said.

Supercomputing is "being scaled down so more people can make use of these very complicated tools -- and I think that's one of the indications of Microsoft's interest here," Kramer said.