[yellowdog-announce] Terra Soft Announces Preliminary Xserve G5 Support: 26 May 2004

Tue May 25 23:44:01 2004

TERRA SOFT ANNOUNCES PRELIMINARY XSERVE G5 SUPPORT

Loveland, Colorado -- 26 May 2004 -- Terra Soft Solutions, Inc., the leading 
developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions, has achieved preliminary 
Linux support for the Apple G5 Xserve and Cluster Node.

Using an in-house Y-HPC beta with the assistance of key PowerPC Linux 
community members, Terra Soft successfully enabled an Apple G5 Cluster Node 
with immediate support for SATA, USB, and FireWire. Fan control support is in 
progress ...

"The Apple G5 Xserve and Cluster Node are incredible machines, more powerful 
and of a higher quality design than anything Apple has produced to date. Our 
customers' enthusiasm is overwhelming as we are weekly receiving quote 
requests for systems built upon this product line," states Kai Staats, CEO of 
Terra Soft Solutions.

At the core of Apple's G5 Xserve are IBM PowerPC 970 CPUs, capable of both 
native 32- and 64-bit operations. The Xserves offer dual 2GHz 970s with 512K 
L2 cache and 1GHz system bus per processor, DDR400 SDRAM with support for 
ECC, Serial ATA drives, dual on-board gig-e, and serial ports --all 
integrated through bi-directional 800MHz HyperTransport interconnects for 
1.6GBps throughput.

Staats continues, "Terra Soft is about to enter a very exciting month, for 
June will bring both Yellow Dog Linux v4.0 and Y-HPC to market, each of which 
offers world-firsts in Linux support."

Yellow Dog Linux unfolds as the continuing evolution of Terra Soft's 32-bit OS 
for Apple USB-G3s, G4s, and G5s. Built from Fedora, v4.0 will ship with 8 CDs 
(4 Install, 4 Source). Included will be support for new USB, FireWire, and 
PCMCIA devices including 54Mb Wi-Fi cards. Package updates include KDE 3.2, 
X.org, RPM Package Manager 4.3, gcc 3.3, and kernel 2.6.6.

Yellow Dog Linux v4.0 is slated to be made available to YDL.net Enhanced 
accounts by mid-June, available two weeks prior to the Terra Soft on-line 
Store; one month prior to release from the public FTP mirrors.

The current beta Y-HPC remains the world's only fully 64-bit OS for Apple G5s 
with support for 16GB RAM (8 GB currently tested) per thread, native 64-bit 
integers, and a complete gcc-based tool chain. Y-HPC will ship with 2 DVDs 
(Install, Source) as a rolling, continually improved, date-stamped product.

Y-HPC will be available from the new YDL.net Pro accounts, a fee-based upgrade 
from YDL.net Enhanced and from the Terra Soft on-line Store. More information 
will be available at http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/ and http://www.ydl.net/

About Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
Terra Soft is a leading developer of integrated solutions for PowerPC, an 
Apple Authorized Proprietary Solutions Provider, and an Integrator-VAR for 
IBM and Momentum Computer. Yellow Dog Linux has boosted viability of Linux on 
PowerPC microprocessors with support for desktop, embedded, and HPC systems. 
Terra Soft was recently awarded a contract to develop an IBM 970 Evaluation 
Board Support Package.

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

IBM and PowerPC are registered trademarks of International Business Machines 
Corporation. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are property of 
their respective owners.