[yellowdog-announce] SO-TI Uses Cell for High Performance Patent Analysis & Mapping: Press Release 4 February 2009

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

CELL/B.E. ADVANCES EFFICIENCY OF PATENT ANALYSIS AND MAP CREATION

TOKYO, JAPAN - 4 February 2009 - SO-TI, Inc. and Fixstars Corporation today 
announced their collaborative effort to improve the XLUS, SO-TI's patent 
information analysis system, using the Cell Broadband Engine™. This effort 
produced a 15x increase in performance in the creation of 'patent maps', a 
graphical map which showcases the relationship between various patents.

A graphical patent map is used in R&D and Intellectual Property departments 
for extracting, organizing, and analyzing large volumes of patent 
information. SO-TI's XLUS is a web-based patent information analysis software 
service which offers conceptual searches through natural language. The output 
is an intuitive, graphical map of associated patents. With its impressive, 
high degree of accuracy and user-friendly usability, XLUS is found in major 
precision equipment manufacturers, transport equipment manufacturers, 
electronic equipment manufacturers, and financial institutions in both Japan 
and the U.S.

SO-TI chose the Fixstars' GigaAccel 180, the high-performance Cell computer on 
a PCIe card, as its preferred hardware platform on which to run XLUS. XLUS is 
performing 15x faster on the GigaAccel 180 than prior to the collaboration 
with the Fixstars Cell optimization team. The time required to display 100 
patent maps is drastically cut from 15 to just 5 minutes (see Figure 1). The 
combination of GigaAccel 180 and XLUS greatly reduces the time required to 
create the patent map, thereby increasing efficiency in the workplace.

"XLUS uses the same Non-Linear Least Squares Method as used to create radar 
graphics," said Yoshio Takaeda, CEO of SO-TI. "Fixstars' leading parallel 
programming skill on the Cell/B.E. realized more than an order of magnitude 
improvement compared to the existing equivalent of Intel Xeon 2G. It 
drastically reduced calculation cost. SO-TI is advancing development so that 
all customers can easily use a totally new information reference method."

"As XLUS uses double precision arithmetic, the Cell 'PowerXCell 8i' on 
GigaAccel 180 maximizes the optimized performance," said Yosuke Tamura, CTO 
of Fixstars. "We anticipate that this improvement in performance will attract 
new users to XLUS and the Cell/B.E. through SO-TI's. We are supporting SO-TI 
with our full and believe that we will offer the innovative service."

"XLUS" is an analyzing tool which graphically indicates the association 
between text data from patents or academic papers, in particularly those from 
Japan and the U.S. The products "XLUS Green" and "XLUS White" handle Japanese 
published patents, while "XLUS Eagle G" and "XLUS Eagle W" deal with the U.S. 
patents. Use of the products is simple, enabling anyone to discover industry 
trends or the general, technical direction of competitive companies.

To learn more about the XLUS, visit: www.so-ti.com/en/products/xlus/


About SO-TI
SO-TI provides a unique information analysis method which describes enormous 
amount of data by method with emphasis on objective and panoramic. In 
particular, we provide ASP service "XLUS", and technology analysis and 
consulting using "XLUS".

To learn more about SO-TI, visit www.so-ti.com


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, OS 
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 with subsidiary Fixstars Solutions in San Jose, CA and 
Loveland, CO.

To learn more about SO-TI, visit us.fixstars.com


"XLUS" is a registered trademark of SO-TI, Inc. "GigaAccel" is a trademark of 
Fixstars Corporation. Fixstars name and logo are registered trademarks of 
Fixstars Corporation. "Cell Broadband Engine" and "Cell/B.E." are trademarks 
of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. All other trademarks and registered 
trademarks belong to their rights holders. Contents may change without prior 
notice.