INDUSTRY

The innovative PeakStream Platform, designed to harness the power of multi-core processors, is now available to an expanded developer base: PeakStream, Inc., a leading software application platform provider for the high performance computing (HPC) market, today announced its innovative PeakStream Platform is now available in beta version for Microsoft Windows. PeakStream Workstation for Microsoft Windows Edition allows software developers to easily program new high performance processors such as multi-core CPUs and graphics processor units (GPUs) directly on their desktops. Now, programmers working with Windows can enjoy the same advantages that their Linux-based counterparts have been benefiting from since the PeakStream Platform's initial launch last September: the ability to develop technical and scientific applications faster, and run them at higher performance, using their existing tools and programming languages. "The tremendous amounts of compute power locked inside graphics and multi-core processors hold great potential for expanding the opportunities within engineering, medical research, exploration and other critical human endeavors," said David Blythe architect in the Desktop and Graphics Technologies group at Microsoft. "Microsoft is making such technology more mainstream by combining the strengths of the Windows platform and technologies from partners like PeakStream and bringing them to departments and divisions in commercial industry and the public sector." PeakStream Workstation for Microsoft Windows combines a set of extensive Math libraries in C/C++ with an optimizing runtime and a set of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 tool extensions to enable rapid development of applications for multi-core CPUs and GPUs. With its newest offering, PeakStream is providing the first commercial grade software application platform available for Microsoft Windows that offers a high-level API that insulates code from low-level hardware details and ensures portability to future hardware platforms without recoding. While alternative approaches ask developers to lock their applications into specific hardware implementations or master hardware-level interfaces, PeakStream allows programmers to develop applications that will easily scale across the rapidly changing and emerging world of multi-core processors and highly parallel systems. "We see Accelerated Computing as the next wave. Torrenza is an example of Accelerated Computing that will use different types of compute engines, such as AMD Stream processors, to enable applications to reach speeds previously thought impossible. New software platforms are key to enabling the full advantage of these Accelerated Computing architectures," said Marty Seyer, senior vice president, Commercial Segment and Advanced Solutions, AMD. "It's great that Windows-based developers can now take advantage of the PeakStream Platform on AMD stream processors without having to become experts in graphics languages or multi-threaded programming." "The computing power that multi-core processors provide is the key to technical advances in so many industries, from the defense sector to financial services. Organizations, however, are understandably reluctant to invest time and money in developing applications tied to hardware architectures that will be obsolete within a few years. We believe that software capabilities to enable multi-core processors are pivotal to technical breakthroughs in key industries and we are excited to introduce a development platform that will allow the numerous programmers working on Windows to develop applications that can keep up with the rapidly evolving space," said Matthew Papakipos, founder and chief technology officer of PeakStream. Supported Platforms and Availability The PeakStream Platform Workstation for Microsoft Windows Edition beta is currently available for download at its Web site. PeakStream recommends an AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon workstation or server equipped with a supported GPU such as the ATI Radeon 1950 or the AMD Stream Processor. NOTE: PeakStream's VP of Marketing, Michael Mullany, will be speaking at this week's Multicore Expo (Web site) at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California. Michael will discuss "Data Parallel Programming Models for Many Core Architectures: Using a Virtual Machine for Code Parallelization" on Wednesday, March 28 at 2:20pm and Thursday, March 29 at 1:50pm. Both sessions will be in Room 3.