News Briefs - Software:

Critical Software Unveils WMPI v1.6 w/ Linux Cluster Support

Critical Software announces WMPI version 1.6 with Linux cluster support; partners with Infinicon Systems to deliver Infiniband solutions. With the release of WMPI version 1.6, the company increases its product offering and platform availability for its MPI-1.2 compliant implementation.

"We have been focusing our R&D efforts on enhancing our MPI-2 implementation, WMPI II, for several years and decided it was time to allow WMPI users to take advantage of these same enhancements," said Peter Tyndale, HPC Business Development Manager for Critical Software. "So WMPI is now founded on the same code base as WMPI II. This means that, as well as supporting Linux, WMPI also runs on 64 bit AMD processors, integrates with Linux profiling and debugging tools, has easier to use installation procedures and improved performance and robustness. These additional benefits, when combined with our professional technical support and recently reduced pricing, make for a very competitive MPI-1.2 solution."

The Linux profiling and debugging tools supported by WMPI include: IntelÒ Cluster Tools (formerly marketed as Vampir), and Streamline Computing's Distributed Debugging Tool (DDT).

Critical Software partnered recently with Infinicon Systems - a world-class leading provider of I/O virtualization and clustering services for Infiniband- based clusters - by joining the Infinicon's I3 Program. Through this ISV initiative, Critical's HPC division will be able to incorporate their high- performance WMPI II implementation into Infinicon's software stack, taking advantage of the RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) architecture of their high-speed interconnectors to create an extremely low latency and high bandwidth message-passing environment.

The I3 Program allows joint development, support and marketing between the two companies, strengthening both their positions in the HPC space. This effort will allow end-users to harness the superior performance offered by Infinicon's fabrics, known to be the most advanced in the Infiniband market.

WMPI for Windows and Linux is the entry-level product of Critical Software's suite of middleware products for HPC, which includes WMPI II (based on version 2 of the standard), Patent MPI and WMX, a fault-tolerant MPI-like message passing implementation.