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Industry-Leading Compiler Developers to Focus on High Processor Count Applications: SiCortex, the first company to engineer a Linux cluster from the silicon up, announced today that it has acquired the PathScale compiler business from QLogic. PathScale’s compiler team, along with certain intellectual property and business agreements, will join SiCortex. Fred Chow, who heads up the PathScale team at QLogic, will join SiCortex as director of compiler engineering. “This will allow PathScale LLC to focus on delivering even greater compiler performance and multicore processor scalability,” said Margaret Lewis, director, Commercial Solutions, AMD. “PathScale remains an important member of the ecosystem of AMD partners who are working with AMD to evolve multicore processing.” The award-winning PathScale Compiler Suite offers high-performance C, C++, and Fortran 95 compilers for 64-bit Linux-based computer systems. The compiler suite offers sophisticated optimization infrastructures for X86-64 and MIPS64 architectures. Providing time-saving GNU compatibility and utilizing advanced processor features, the Pathscale Compiler Suite is an essential development tool for performance-sensitive software engineers. “The PathScale compiler suite is highly valued by a number of our customers in underpinning their investment in Streamline's Linux Cluster Solutions,” says John Taylor, CTO of Streamline Computing. “We welcome the news that this technology is to be developed further in support of X86/64-based architectures, as well as being used by SiCortex for their innovative high-processor-count solution. We look forward to continued interaction with the PathScale compiler team.” The PathScale compiler team offers a unique blend of expertise, having developed industry-leading compilers across many generations of computer technology. A compiler translates a program from its original source code into the object code used by a machine’s processors. As high-processor-count computing becomes the norm, there is an increasing need for a new generation of software tools dedicated to making processors cooperate to solve problems. The development of sophisticated, next generation compilers will be an essential part of that process. “The HPC market has seen four years of extreme growth that has averaged over 20 percent a year. This has led to a major increase in installed processors running technical problems with over three million processors installed in 2006. With multicore processors now coming on strong, we expect that the number of processor cores sold into HPC market segments will exceed Moore's Law growth rates (more than doubling every 18 to 24 months),” said Dr. Earl Joseph, program vice president of high-performance systems for the research firm IDC. “SiCortex and PathScale have developed interesting technologies in both hardware and software and now can pool their expertise to address the evolving market requirements.” SiCortex has introduced a new concept in high-performance computing, limiting power consumption, and physical size to gain performance. The company has implemented a complete cluster node on a chip, including six 64-bit processors, multiple memory controllers, a high-performance cluster interconnect, and a PCIexpress connection to storage and internetworking. A SiCortex cluster node consumes 15 watts of power, an order of magnitude less than the 250 watts used in a conventional cluster node. The SC5832 can perform six trillion operations per second in a cabinet that is less than one-third the size of conventional clusters.