Absoft Fortran compilers are now available for the Rocks cluster distribution

Clustercorp, the leader in commercial software and support for the Rocks cluster distribution, announced availability of a new Absoft Roll as part of its Rocks+Rolls program. The Absoft Roll includes the Absoft Pro Fortran v10.1 Compiler Suite for x86_64 systems and is fully compatible with Rocks+ 4.3 and the open-source Rocks 4.3 software stack. The Absoft compiler suite includes optimizations for the complete line of AMD and Intel x64 processors, as well as specialized tuning for the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, which is particularly pertinent to the HPC Cluster community. Clustercorp developed the Absoft Roll to enhance its commercial Rocks+ product line, and is making the Absoft Roll generally available to end-users as part of its expanded support to the open source Rocks community. “Absoft is pleased to partner with Clustercorp, a leading provider of Rocks+Rolls solutions, to develop an Absoft roll based on Absoft Fortran. Rocks+Roll bundles solve the problems associated with software configuration and installation on clusters, and Absoft and Clustercorp are committed to providing a one-stop, easy-to-install solution which provides the highest performing and most complete software solution for x64/Linux HPC customers,” said Wood Lotz, president of Absoft Corporation. “ Clustercorp’s Absoft Roll includes the complete Absoft compiler suite and provides customers with industry leading performance, advanced auto parallelization and vectorization tuned for today’s latest x64 multi-core processors, with special focus on AMD’s latest Quad Core cpus. Full support for the complete Absoft Rocks+Roll bundle is available and additional details on the Absoft roll are available on the Absoft and Clustercorp websites,” continued Lotz. “With Rocks’ current position as the dominant Linux-based cluster solution, it is advantageous for ISVs to make their software packages readily available in Roll format. We are pleased to welcome Absoft to the Rocks community and announce the Absoft Roll as their first commercial product packaged for Rocks 4.3. We look forward to continue support of Absoft products in future Rocks releases,” said Tim McIntire, President, Clustercorp. The Absoft Roll demo is freely available to download (a compiler license is required for use beyond the demo period) from Clustercorp.com and is fully supported in Rocks+. Rocks+ adds two critical components necessary for deploying Rocks as an enterprise-class solution: Rocks+Support - Rocks+Support addresses the biggest problem in using an open source solution such as Rocks – “the support gap.” While community support for active open source projects like Rocks is a great start, a complex, high-value deployment such as an HPC Cluster requires the formal backing of an experienced support team. Clustercorp was founded by the core members of the Rocks community to serve this purpose. Rocks+Rolls - The second obstacle to a successful cluster deployment commonly arises shortly after cluster delivery, when system administrators begin the burdensome process of application installation and configuration across their new cluster. Rocks uses a powerful paradigm called “Rolls,” which automate the installation of software across a cluster and prevent software skew. Clustercorp is focused on the Rocks applications layer, bringing many popular 3rd party software packages into the Rocks software stack.