SANTA ANA, CA -- MSC.Software Corp. (NYSE: MNS), a leading global provider of simulation software, services and systems, today announced the release of the first and only commercially available Linux distribution for Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2-based systems for high performance computing. "The technical and engineering computing needs of our customers continues to grow rapidly and there is a significant market opportunity for companies who can deliver, implement and support high-performance computing systems," said Frank Perna, Chairman and CEO, MSC.Software Corporation. "MSC.Software strives to provide customers with the most advanced software, services and systems and the fact that we are the first company to provide an Itanium 2-based Linux distribution for high performance computing illustrates our commitment to expanding our business into the most advanced and innovative fields." "Through HP's long-standing partnership with MSC.Software, we have broken new ground in technical advances with Linux," said Martin Fink, general manager, HP Linux Systems Division. "Together, we are building the world's most powerful Linux and Itanium2-based supercomputer for the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, using the MSC.Linux distribution. We look forward to delivering this technical mix for customers across a spectrum of industries who need high performance technical computing solutions." "MSC.Software's engineering applications address the most demanding engineering problems and are a great fit with the Itanium 2 processor's capabilities. We're confident that customers will find value in the combination of MSC engineering applications and MSC.Linux V2002 running on Itanium 2-based systems," said Lisa Hambrick, director, Intel Enterprise Processor Marketing. "One of the biggest advantages Itanium 2 processors give computationally intensive applications is a bigger addressable space that results in faster calculations, which is critical to users running demanding engineering applications such as MSC.Nastran, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and crash simulations," said Perna. The first customer to run an Itanium 2-based system with the MSC.Linux distribution is Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which has implemented one of the world's fastest Linux clusters. The cluster, which is comprised of HP servers, Itanium 2 processors and the MSC.Linux V2002 distribution, has the ability to scale to 700 nodes. For information visit www.mscsoftware.com/hpc.