[yellowdog-announce] RapidMind, Terra Soft Unleash PLAYSTATION3 for Linux Developers

[Announce List for all Terra Soft products (moderated)]

RapidMind and Terra Soft Partner to Unleash PLAYSTATION3 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(R)3 easier than ever. As part of an agreement with Sony Computer 
Entertainment Incorporated, Terra Soft Solutions announced the release of 
Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3(TM). With the RapidMind Development Platform, 
developers can easily create applications that will run on the PS3, as well 
as other hardware solutions based on the Cell Broadband Engine(TM).

RapidMind will be providing a full-featured evaluation version of the 
RapidMind 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 PS3 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 PS3 without the need to 
understand the underlying architecture of this complex multi-core processor. 
The RapidMind platform makes that possible."

PS3 is the latest interactive entertainment console from Sony, designed for a 
cutting-edge gaming experience. The PS3 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(R) Server as well as from Mercury Computer Systems in several 
form factors.

"The PS3 places a supercomputer in the home," said Kai Staats, Terra Soft CEO. 
"Yellow Dog Linux provides a complete Linux OS for the PS3 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 PS3 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 IBM. PLAYSTATION 
is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Power 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.