Absoft Announces Software Development Kit Solutions for IBM® Grid and Grow™ Including Software Products from Intel Corporation

Business Wire, Oct 4, 2005

BOSTON -- Absoft's High Performance Computing Software Development Kits and IBM's Grid and Grow Allow Developers to Achieve Maximum Productivity

Absoft Corporation today announced a powerful new software developers kit designed to make it easier for companies of all sizes to build and deploy affordable and efficient Grid computing IT operations.

Introduced at the inaugural GridWorld(TM) Conference in Boston, the Absoft High-Performance Computing Software Development Kit (HPC SDK) has been specifically designed to work with the recently announced IBM Grid and Grow(TM) hardware and services offering.

The HPC SDK's preconfigured software is the result of close collaboration between Absoft and IBM and includes key contributions of software development tools from Intel Corporation, helping to ensure maximum performance on both IBM POWER(R) and Intel Xeon(R)-based systems running Linux. Absoft is a leading provider of high-performance software development tools.

"The combination of IBM Grid and Grow with the HPC Software Development Kits is one of the most exciting offerings for software developers in this century. The range of innovative applications and productivity improvements for software development is virtually unlimited with IBM Grid and Grow coupled with the Absoft SDKs," said Absoft executive vice president Jeff Livesay. "This new product combination can enable rapid new advances in virtually every scientific and commercial field of endeavor, unleashing the full capabilities of software developers and broad new classes of applications, products, and efficiencies."

Absoft's HPC SDKs for 64-bit Intel(R) Xeon(TM) and IBM POWER(TM) processor-based systems running Linux allow developers to easily compile, run, debug, and optimize high performance software applications. The Absoft HPC SDK is a complete solution that includes some of the industry's leading software tools optimized for 64-bit extensions and is preconfigured for easy installation. HPC SDKs for IBM Grid and Grow configurations start at $4999. Government, academic, and volume discounts are available.

"The combination of IBM's Grid and Grow hardware and Absoft's HPC SDK software provides developers the most cost effective way to manage the complex resources of distributed systems and perform multi-task development processes too complex for a single computer to handle efficiently," said Ken King, vice president of Grid computing, IBM Systems and Technology Group. "As more computing resources are added to the Grid, developers can transparently add more computing power."

IBM Grid and Grow is a powerful solution designed to help organizations get started quickly with affordable Grid computing. Built using the industry-leading IBM eServer BladeCenter platform, Grid and Grow utilizes an open, robust, and scalable architecture that adjusts to a client's needs, allowing customers to expand to larger, more powerful Grid implementations as required. Grid and Grow configurations are available with 64-bit Intel(R) Xeon(TM) and IBM POWER(TM) processors running Linux. Configurations begin with 7 blades starting at $49,000.

IBM's Grid and Grow and Absoft's HPC SDKs together open the door to maximum productivity for a wide range of development scenarios, including:

--Individual developers using personal supercomputers - multi-tasking developers can easily manage distributed development system resources with multiple environments, builds, and runs at the same time.

--Development teams using project supercomputers - provides a shared resource for a team of developers or testers to develop using multiple environments while minimizing reboots and reinstalls.

--Developers using clusters - use the pre-built MPI libraries to achieve maximum FLOPS across the full grid, and easily span grids or clusters of clusters.

--Dedicated testing using clusters - dramatically shorten the product test cycle using a dedicated grid or cluster for testing, with each processor running a separate test suite.

Intel Corporation, contributor to elements of IBM's Grid and Grow offering, is providing education through Intel's business partner channel, solution blueprints, and joint customer engagements. Intel recently added Absoft as a distributor for their complete line of software products which is now available through more than 200 Absoft resellers.

Fully optimized for implementation in environments such as Grid computing, every Absoft HPC SDK includes top-performing Fortran and C/C compilers from IBM, Intel, and Absoft, along with debuggers, math libraries, pre-built message passing (MPI) libraries, and other development tools. Also included are a comprehensive set of example HPC programs to help new users quickly learn how to take full advantage of MPI for cluster programming and the HPC SDK features.

The Absoft HPC SDK has been optimized to work with Altair Engineering's PBS Professional, an industry leading workload management solution for IBM's Grid and Grow offering.

"The combination of the Absoft HPC SDK application development tools with Altair's PBS Professional workload manager gives customers a best of breed solution that maximizes application performance and resource utilization, allowing customers to realize the full benefit from their IBM Grid and Grow solution," said Michael Humphrey, vice president of Altair Engineering's enterprise computing business unit.