News
RapidMind and Terra Soft partner to unleash PlayStation® 3 for Linux developers
Waterloo, Ontario - January 11, 2007 - RapidMind and Terra Soft announced today that they have teamed up to make application development for the PlayStation® 3 easier than ever. As part of an agreement with Sony Computer Entertainment Incorporated, Terra Soft Solutions announced last month the release of Yellow Dog Linux for the PlayStation 3. With the RapidMind Multi-core Development Platform, developers can easily create applications that will run on the PlayStation 3, as well as other hardware solutions based on the Cell Broadband Engine™ (Cell BE).
RapidMind will be providing a full-featured evaluation version of the RapidMind Multi-core Development Platform v2.0 for distribution from Terra Soft's YDL.net Enhanced accounts. “It’s exciting to imagine what will happen when you put a supercomputer-class PlayStation 3 with a great OS into the hands of developers,” said Ray DePaul, RapidMind President and CEO. “Developers are eager to take advantage of the Cell BE and the PlayStation 3 without the need to understand the underlying architecture of this complex multi-core processor. The RapidMind platform makes that possible.”
PlayStation 3 is the latest interactive entertainment console from Sony, designed for a cutting-edge gaming experience. The PlayStation 3 incorporates the Cell BE processor which was created by IBM, Sony, and Toshiba for more than gaming. The Cell BE is already available from IBM in the form of a blade for the IBM® BladeCenter® Server as well as from Mercury Computer Systems in several form factors.
“The PlayStation 3 places a supercomputer in the home,” said Kai Staats, Terra Soft CEO. “Yellow Dog Linux provides a complete Linux OS for the PlayStation 3 resulting in a very powerful computing platform. We are thrilled to be working with RapidMind to make this platform more accessible for professional developers and hobbyists alike.” Developer’s now have an excellent development platform to develop applications for the Cell BE, whether for deployment on the PlayStation 3 or as a jumping off point for deployments to other Cell BE based products, including those from IBM, Sony, or Mercury.
RapidMind will also be participating in a Hack-a-thon (www.hpc-consortium.net) from January 20th to the 26th for the optimization of applications for the Cell BE, hosted by Terra Soft at their Loveland, Colorado headquarters. RapidMind, along with organizations such as Argonne, Oak Ridge, Colorado State, IBM, Mercury, and Tungsten Graphics have committed resources with dozens of other labs, universities, and individuals planning to participate. The intent of this event is to create a set of application examples to showcase the potential of the Cell BE.
About RapidMind Inc.
RapidMind provides a software development platform that allows software vendors to deliver high performance on multi-core and stream processors, including the GPU and the Cell BE. Without sacrificing development simplicity, RapidMind-enabled applications experience a dramatic leap in performance. For more information on RapidMind, visit www.RapidMind.net.
About Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
As the recognized leader in Linux for Power since 1999, Terra Soft provides turn-key, integrated solutions built upon IBM, Mercury, and Sony systems, board support packages for Power OEMs, and cross-architecture Linux applications for high performance computing. Terra Soft develops Yellow Dog Linux, the leading 32/64-bit Linux OS for the Power architecture, first to market with support for the Cell processor; the Y-HPC cross-architecture cluster construction suite; and Y-Bio, a cross-architecture gene sequence analysis suite for both workstations and clusters. For more information, visit www.terrasoftsolutions.com
RapidMind is a trademark of RapidMind Inc. IBM is a registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States or other countries or both. Cell Broadband Engine is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. PLAYSTATION is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. PowerPC is a trademark of IBM. YDL, Y-HPC, and Y-Bio are trademarks of Terra Soft Solutions. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Additional product and company names mentioned may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective holders.