SYSTEMS

Mercury Computer Systems announced that it has shipped its first Cell Technology Evaluation System (CTES). Based on the Mercury Dual Cell-Based Blade just announced in October 2005, the CTES is a turnkey system that features the IBM Cell Broadband Engine (BE) processor, and an Intel Architecture development/simulation environment, with pre-installed Mercury, IBM, and open-source Cell Technology software. These early-access systems enable customers to evaluate Cell BE processor-based computing solutions and begin prototyping advanced applications for the defense, medical, industrial inspection, and other markets. "We're very pleased to see customers across industries moving so quickly to evaluate and adopt our Cell BE processor-based products," said Randy Dean, Vice President, Business and Technology Development. "Our customers have expressed high expectations with the implementation of the Cell Technology into their application development." The Cell Technology Evaluation System is integrated with Mercury's MultiCore Framework (MCF) software to optimize data movement within the Cell BE processors. The MCF is part of the Mercury MultiCore Plus Advantage, a comprehensive hardware, software, and services offering unrivaled in the industry. The MultiCore Plus Advantage employs sophisticated middleware that abstracts hardware capabilities and manages the distribution of data across multiple computing elements working in tandem. It includes patented cooling technologies, lightweight system-on-chip (SoC) management software, multicore implementations of key algorithms, visualization tools designed for clusters, algorithm tuning, and more. Also integrated into the CTES is the Y-HPC Linux on Cell Board Support Package from Terra Soft Solutions, which enables a simple, rapid installation and netboot-capable Linux environment.