Press Release 841 Published by

A press release from Terra Soft Solutions:

LOVELAND, Colorado - 8 March 2006 - Terra Soft Solutions, the leading developer of integrated Power Architecture Linux solutions today released v1.1 of its Y-HPC Cluster Construction & Management Suite for G5 Xserves, both improving the product offering and initiating a focused switch campaign.



Built against Yellow Dog Linux v4.1, Y-HPC v1.1 offers the following improvements over the original release:
- Offers a YDL 4.1 node image.
- XCPU replacement of BProc.
- Ganglia cluster monitor.
- TORQUE job scheduler.
- 64-bit 2.6.15 64 kernel.
- 64-bit GDB.
- 64-Bit LAM, MPICH, MPICH2, and OpenMPI.
- Updated PVFS2.
- General improvements to the installer.

In addition, the Moab Cluster Suite(R) by Cluster Resources is now available from Terra Soft. Complementary to the updated TORQUE and Ganglia, Moab provides Users an HTML interface and Administrators a Java interface to the cluster applications and hardware, eliminating the complexity of management through a set of intuitive graphical interfaces.

New to Y-HPC v1.1 is XCPU, a process management system for clusters divided into control nodes and compute nodes. XCPU incorporates a set of simple tools for starting cluster-wide processes wherein the control nodes migrate execution to the compute nodes via the '9p' process management service. The XCPU server is 'mounted' in much the same way NFS is mounted. In this regard, services provided by XCPU are available as files in a file system.

Ron Minnich, Team Leader of the Cluster Research Team at Los Alamos National Lab states, "XCPU was co-developed by LANL and Bell Labs for the Plan 9 operating system. A replacement and improvement over BProc, XCPU is designed to provide Linux clusters with a new approach to cluster job execution. Terra Soft's integration of XCPU into Y-HPC v1.1 demonstrates its commitment to pioneering new cluster software technologies for large-scale, mission-critical clusters."

Usually $100 per CPU, Y-HPC v1.1 is now available for a flat fee of just $650 to those who already own an Apple G5 Xserve cluster and desire Linux as the primary operating system.

Kai Staats, CEO of Terra Soft Solutions, states, "Since Apple's announcement of their transition to Intel last summer, we have received numerous requests for Y-HPC for use with existing G5 Xserve clusters. However, budgets are tight and not everyone was able to switch. Therefore, with v1.1 we have reduced the barrier to entry for those who desire a Linux-based G5 Xserve cluster. At $650 per cluster, independent of the number of nodes, it just makes sense."

To contact Terra Soft about switching to Y-HPC:
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/y-hpc/switch.shtml

To purchase Y-HPC or a complete cluster:
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/store/

Y-HPC v1.1 is immediately available for download via YDL.net Pro accounts.


About Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
Terra Soft is a leading Integrated Solutions Provider with proven expertise in the Power Architecture and Linux OS platform. As a Mercury, Apple and Genesi VAR, and an IBM Business Partner, Terra Soft provides turnkey and built-to-order portables, desktop workstations, HA servers, and HPC clusters. Terra Soft's Y-HPC 64-bit OS and cluster construction suite is widely accepted as a preferred platform for Xserve clusters.

Terra Soft's recent product launches include Y-Bio, a cross-architecture life sciences package; and provision of the world's first commercial Linux Board Support Package for the Cell processor in collaboration with Mercury Computer.

For more information, visit http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com


IBM(R), Power and Power Architecture are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. Apple and Xserve are registered trademarks of Apple Computer. Moab Cluster Suite is a trademark of Cluster Resources, Inc. Additional product and company names mentioned may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective holders.