[yellowdog-announce] Fixstars Aquires Terra Soft Solutions; Complete Cell Ecosystem: Press Release 11 November 2008

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

FIXSTARS PROVIDES COMPLETE CELL ECOSYSTEM

TOKYO, Japan -- 11 November 2008 -- Fixstars Corporation, a pioneering company 
in Cell Broadband Engine™ based solutions, today announced the acquisition of 
substantially all the assets of Terra Soft Solutions, the world renowned 
developer of Yellow Dog Linux. The new subsidiary 'Fixstars Solutions, Inc.', 
of San Jose, California, maintains the entire Terra Soft staff, product line, 
and regional offices in Loveland, Colorado.

Terra Soft was founded in 1999 to provide a Linux operating system for the 
Power architecture family of microprocessors. With its early roots in the 
Apple PowerPC, Terra Soft grew to become one of the top five Apple Value 
Added Resellers, uniquely licensed to install an alternative to Mac OS, with 
customers including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, NASA, DoE labs and top 
universities.

Kai Staats, former CEO of Terra Soft Solutions, now COO of Fixstars Solutions 
states, “Terra Soft started with my personal credit card and what in 
retrospect was an unlikely team to create a Linux distribution: a 17 year old 
sys admin, FileMaker Pro programmer, graphic designer, and marketing 
consultant. Dan, Troy, Jake and I threw ourselves into the challenge of 
building something which we were told (more than once) was impossible. Over 
one hundred Linux companies came and went, but we always pulled through."

In the fall of 2005 Terra Soft began its work with Cell under contract with 
Mercury Computer. A year later Terra Soft expanded its Cell support to the 
Sony PS3. In 2007, Terra Soft released YDL v6.0 with support for the IBM 
BladeCenter QS2x family of products.

Through this acquisition, Fixstars will continue to maintain Yellow Dog Linux 
as the only Linux OS with support for every Cell/B.E. based product on the 
market, including Fixstars' own GigaAccel 180 and Sony ZEGO BCU-100.

Staats continues, "Our ten years' determination this year opened the door to a 
merger of teams and talent which for me is the continuation of a dream. 
Miki-san and I, our teams too, share a common vision and drive for completion 
of the Power ecosystem and perfection which is now amplified and accelerated 
by the new Fixstars Solutions.”

Founded in 2002, Fixstars has since 2004 provided application development and 
optimization services for the Cell Broadband Engine multi-core processor. 
Fixstars maintains the world's largest dedicated Cell/B.E. development staff. 
Fixstars' customers include industry leaders and Cell consortium founders 
Sony, Toshiba, and IBM and companies such as Mizuho Securities, Mitsubishi 
Research Institute, and Broadcast International.

“A Cell/B.E. software developer and long-time user of Yellow Dog Linux, 
Fixstars has great faith in Yellow Dog Linux," said Satoshi Miki, CEO of 
Fixstars. “This business acquisition allows us to offer a reliable and stable 
Linux distribution with sense of ease for our customers. I have no doubt that 
in the expanding Cell/B.E. ecosystem we will offer the best Cell/B.E. 
solution of the High Performance Computing generation."

In April of this year, Fixstars launched the GigaAccel 180 PCIe Cell computer 
as a delivery vehicle for its growing portfolio of turn-key, vertical market 
solutions:
    - Financial
    - Healthcare & Life Sciences
    - Manufacturing Inspection
    - Digital Media 

Fixstars' market specific solutions provide a marked advantage over in-house 
optimization efforts which historically consume significant resources to 
achieve the desired performance. The union of the Fixstars and Terra Soft 
products, services, and engineering expertise forms a complete Cell Broadband 
Engine ecosystem and client offering, reducing time invested and total cost 
of ownership.

Fixstars now provides:
    - Cell application optimization
    - Middleware
    - Yellow Dog Linux
    - Cell based hardware 


About Fixstars Corporation
Fixstars is the pioneering company of the Cell Broadband Engine, high 
performance multi-core processor. Fixstars enables companies to speed up 
business by offering astonishing speed and quality software, middleware on 
Cell/B.E. and hardware equipped Cell/B.E. including the GigaAccel 180 PCIe 
board with PowerXCell™ 8i, for industries such as Finance, Medical, 
Manufacturing and Digital media. Founded in 2002, Fixstars is headquartered 
in Tokyo, Japan.

For more information, visit http://www.fixstars.com/en

GigaAccel, Yellow Dog Linux, YDL, Y-HPC, and Y-Film are registered trademarks 
of Fixstars Corporation. IBM, PXCAB, and POWER are trademarks of IBM 
Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. PS3, ZEGO, and 
BCU-100 are trademarks of Sony. 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.