IBM and PathScale have signed a teaming agreement to jointly market PathScale's high-performance AMD64-optimized Linux compiler suite to IBM HPC customers on a global basis. IBM will offer a trial version of the PathScale EKO Compiler Suite, including C, C++ and Fortran 77/90/95 compilers, with one of its new Departmental Supercomputing Solutions based on the IBM eServer 325.

The agreement gives PathScale the opportunity to leverage IBM's global delivery capability and systems integration skills to provide a comprehensive solution for the most demanding HPC application development environments.

PathScale EKO compilers represent the world's fastest 64-bit compiler suite for AMD Opteron(TM) and AMD Athlon64 processor-based systems such as the IBM eServer 325 and IBM Intellistation A Pro Series Workstations running under Linux. IBM and PathScale are collaborating to optimize the PathScale EKO Compiler Suite to take advantage of the unique performance capabilities of IBM's Departmental Supercomputing Solutions. IBM offers customers and channel partners benchmarking capabilities to optimize the performance of applications using PathScale compilers. Joint marketing activities will be scheduled to coincide with industry events such as the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC2004) in Heidelberg, Germany, the SC2004 Super Computing Conference in Pittsburgh and the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco.

"We have benchmarked the PathScale compilers with our Departmental Supercomputing Solutions and found that customers can expect to experience significant performance improvements," said Dave Turek, vice president, Deep Computing, IBM. "The combination of the Departmental Supercomputing Solutions and PathScale compilers add an efficient, high-performance offering to IBM's HPC systems portfolio."

PathScale's compilers have been in beta test since December and will ship to initial customers on April 14, 2004. They are available for purchase as an annual subscription service. Annual fees for the complete PathScale EKO Compiler Suite start at $1,495 per user and include all appropriate software, updates, upgrades and support for the entire year.

"This strong technology and business relationship between IBM and PathScale will benefit both IBM and PathScale customers by making Linux clusters more productive," said Scott Metcalf, president and CEO of PathScale. "IBM's Opteron-based e325 servers have been a core development platform for PathScale engineering and have proven to be extremely fast and highly reliable. We are witnessing a rapid adoption of the e325 servers throughout the HPC community."