LinuxWorld Conference: SPEC Benchmarks Show Sun Microsystems' AMD Opteron-based Servers Perform up to 29 Percent Faster when Optimized by PathScale EKOPath Compilers

-- Sun SunFire 2-Way and 4-Way Servers Use PathScale Compiler Suite to Set New World Records for Performance --

Boston, MA and Mountain View, CA - February 15, 2005 - PathScale, developer of innovative software and hardware solutions to accelerate the performance and efficiency of Linux(r) clusters and developer of the award-winning EKOPath(tm) Compiler Suite, has joined Sun Microsystems in announcing the results of groundbreaking standardized performance tests. These announcements were made this week at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston, where the PathScale compiler suite is being exhibited in the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) booth.

More technical details and trademark statements related to this announcement are posted at http://www.pathscale.com/pr_021505.html

Sun tested 2-way Sun Fire V20z and 4-way Sun Fire V40z servers using multiple SPEC benchmarks, including the SPEC(r) ompM2001 suite of OpenMP(r) benchmarks. The PathScale EKOPath Compiler Suite helped Sun's AMD(r) Opteron(r) processor-based servers set world records for SPEC ompM2001 on two-processor and four-processor systems. The Sun/PathScale two-processor results were 29 percent faster than previous-best Linux ompM2001 benchmarks using non-PathScale Fortran and C compilers. This 29 percent advantage, enabled in large part by PathScale compilers, far exceeds the eight percent faster clock rate of the newer Sun systems. The Sun/PathScale four-processor SPEC ompM2001 result surpasses the best four-processor benchmarks on Intel Itanium 2, Power5 and Alpha processors as well as previous SPEC results on four-processor Opteron systems.

Using the SPEC(r) CPU2000 benchmark, the Sun Fire V40z server equipped with the PathScale EKOPath Compiler Suite achieved two new world records for 4-way x86 systems on integer and floating point performance. The V20z server achieved a new x86 world record score on floating point intensive SPECfp2000 performance, as well as the best 2-way x86 result on floating point performance. The PathScale-optimized Sun servers showed improved scalability and higher performance for both floating point and integer performance, with up to 25 percent improvement when compared with previous benchmarks.

"Sun's choice of the PathScale EKOPath compilers over all other compiler alternatives is a testimony to the clear performance advantages of PathScale compilers and our new OpenMP 2.0 implementation," explained Art Goldberg, COO of PathScale. "We have made some major improvements in the EKOPath 2.0 release to optimize performance of multi-processor nodes and have also worked closely with AMD to support their upcoming dual-core processor release. OpenMP performance is critical to efficient use of these types of systems and the Sun benchmark results underscore the quality of the EKOPath implementation."

EKOPath Compiler Suite Availability

The latest version of the PathScale EKOPath Compiler Suite is available through leading Linux cluster solution providers in North America, Europe and Asia participating in the PathScale FastPath(tm) reseller program described at http://www.pathscale.com/authorized_resellers.html.

A 30-day free trial is available to new compiler customers at http://www.pathscale.com/trial.php.

PathScale's Additional Paths to Scalability

In addition to EKOPath, the world's fastest 64-bit compiler suite for Linux clusters, PathScale delivers a number of other software and hardware products to improve the scalability and performance of applications residing on Linux clusters. These include the PathScale InfiniPath(tm) HTX Adapter, the industry's lowest latency Linux cluster interconnect for MPI applications, and the OptiPath(tm) MPI Acceleration Tools, the industry's first user-friendly root cause analysis tools for optimizing MPI applications. Customers can register for early access to InfiniPath and OptiPath by visiting http://www.pathscale.com/earlyaccess.html

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