ENGINEERING

Absoft Corporation, the leading provider of Fortran tools for the Mac platform, today announced their Pro Fortran v9.2 Compiler Suite for Apple’s new Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" operating system. Pro Fortran v9.2 provides full support for Apple’s 64-bit operating system allowing Fortran developers to fully exploit the entire addressable memory space of the G5 processor for the first time. Pro Fortran v9.2 can produce programs optimized for either 32-bit or 64-bit Mac OS X systems. Whether customers are running Tiger on a 32-bit or 64-bit platform, a single copy of Pro Fortran v9.2 is all that is needed to develop Fortran programs that take full advantage of the system. Pro Fortran v9.2 still fully supports Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". "We are pleased to offer the first 64-bit Fortran compiler suite optimized for Tiger," said Wood Lotz, President of Absoft. "Over the past several months Absoft has received hundreds of inquiries asking when 64-bit Fortran for Tiger would be available and we are pleased to announce the time is here, along side Tiger’s official release. Our latest release of Pro Fortran offers optimum performance to Mac OS X customers, whether on 32-bit Panther or 64-bit Tiger. This compiler suite is a single solution for everyone. Apple has created increasingly-popular computers with their G5-based systems. There is a backlog of demand in the science and engineering communities for 64-bit Fortran leveraging 64-bit memory addressability," continued Lotz. "Customers recognize that Absoft is the only company providing compilers that are fully source-compatible across Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, giving them the ultimate flexibility in choosing the most superior computing platforms to deploy their Fortran applications. Tiger-based G5 systems are an incredibly attractive option, especially when combined with these exciting new 64-bit products from Absoft," concluded Lotz. "Tiger’s leadership in 64 bit computing enables developers to build and run a new generation of applications that address massive amounts of memory," said Ron Okamoto, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. "Absoft’s introduction of 64-bit Fortran compiler for Tiger is an exciting development for the global science and engineering community." The new Pro Fortran v9.2 includes the popular Absoft IDE with programmer’s editor, graphical debugger, graphical libraries and other tools. Further v9.2 improvements include: Absoft’s application framework, the Macintosh Runtime Window Environment (MRWE) completely rewritten in Fortran 95 (with full source code included); new single and dual processor versions of the high performance ATLAS math libraries; the Unix/VAX compatibility libraries now provided as libraries and modules for better interfacing with Fortran 95; and numerous other improvements have been added. Pro Fortran v9.2 is available in single user or floating license configurations for multi-user shared-resource environments such as Xserve clusters. For customers requiring the most comprehensive math and stat functions for high performance and business analytics, the first 64-bit implementation of the Visual Numerics IMSL Fortran Library for Mac OS X, optimized for G5 processors, is also available to Pro Fortran v9.2 customers as an option. A 64-bit version of Crescent Bay’s popular VAST auto- vectorization and auto-parallelization tools completes this comprehensive 64- bit tool set available from Absoft with Pro Fortran v9.2 for 64-bit Tiger. "Visual Numerics is committed to providing advanced analytics on the broadest range of leading-edge platforms available today," said Phil Fraher, president and CEO of Visual Numerics. "By partnering with Absoft as our sole channel provider for the IMSL Libraries on Mac OS X, Visual Numerics is able to expand its coverage with the first 64-bit offering for that platform. Furthermore, given Absoft’s long-standing leadership with top quality compilers for the Mac OS X platform, we can ensure coverage on the latest Mac OS X releases with the greatest performance and quality." "We are seeing several new Mac OS X-based Xserve cluster opportunities every week. The powerful combination of IBM’s PowerPC / G5 processors and Apple’s Mac OS X operating system is gaining popularity every day. We recently installed our own Xserve cluster at Absoft and it is a phenomenal system," said Wood Lotz, President of Absoft. Pro Fortran v9.2 will begin shipping on May 15. Orders are being accepted at this time. Absoft also has new pricing for Mac OS X-based clusters for product bundles including Absoft’s popular compilers. Pro Fortran v9.2 is available as an upgrade to existing registered Pro Fortran OS X v9.0 customers. Academic discounts are available. Product, pricing and order information is available on the Absoft website, by contacting sales@absoft.com , or by calling (248) 853-0050.