Terra Soft Completes TI04 Services for Lockheed Martin, U.S. Navy

Loveland, Colorado -- 2 December 2004 -- Terra Soft Solutions, Inc., leading developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions, has completed support for TI04, the most recent installation of the Lockheed Martin-integrated Acoustic Rapid Commercial Off-The-Shelf Installation (ARCI) program for the U.S. Navy. The ARCI program is a phased effort to provide the U.S. Navy submarine force with a sonar that is far more capable and flexible than earlier designs by using an open-system architecture design that exploits commercial processing improvements.

In 2003, Terra Soft was awarded a hardware and services contract for the TI02 project. Terra Soft delivered 270 Apple G4 Xserves in modified 1U chassis and assisted Lockheed Martin with driver development, performance improvement, and an at-sea node recovery system.

With the G5-based TI04 systems, Terra Soft enabled 64-bit PowerPC Linux support for bootable Compact Flash, a solid-state storage medium; and developed a means by which compact flash cards may be rapidly reformatted and reinstalled via a modified version of Y-HPC's system imager.

Y-HPC is the base of the operating environment supplied by Lockheed Martin for the G5-based units, being used in the production system as well as ground-based simulation systems and trainers by ARCI team members Lockheed Martin, Progeny Systems Corp., SAIC, and the Applied Research Laboratories of the University of Texas at Austin.

"The performance enhancement obtained from the 64-bit computing environment was a significant factor in the decision to introduce Y-HPC into the ARCI process used for the premier submarine fleet in the world. Terra Soft's assistance with the bootable compact flash enabled us to implement a reduced moving parts system for greater mean time between failure," stated Greg Hickey, senior software engineer for Lockheed Martin.

Terra Soft's services included assisting with the migration from 32-bit to 64-bit systems, enabling boot support for Compact Flash cards in order that the operating system may be held in a read-only "black box" environment, and again assisting with the design and implementation of a means by which the crews on board the submarines may install fresh or failed units.

Kai Staats, co-founder and CEO of Terra Soft states, "Lockheed Martin has for two years delivered a series of challenges to our staff, a welcomed series of projects that press the limit of our experience. While Y-HPC was officially launched at SC2004 the second week of November, its development was accelerated by our work with Lockheed Martin and its associates. Y-HPC is therefore brought to market with an existing, installed user base. As with Yellow Dog Linux, Y-HPC is now in use and trusted by Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Navy."

U.S. Navy submarines utilize on-board HPC clusters for the real-time acoustic processing. These systems are revised and upgraded on a rotational basis.

Lockheed Martin has chosen the Apple Xserves and Yellow Dog Linux based Y-HPC as a significant part of its ARCI effort. This combination provides a solution that offers higher density, less power consumption, and greater performance than non-PowerPC, commodity solutions of a similar cost.

Terra Soft has licensed more than 600 CPUs for use with Y-HPC.


About Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
Terra Soft is a leading Integrated Solutions Provider with proven expertise in the PowerPC architecture and Linux OS platform. As an Apple Authorized Proprietary Solutions Provider and IBM Business Partner, Terra Soft provides turnkey and build-to-order portables, desktop workstations, application and network servers, and HPC clusters. Terra Soft offers both 32-bit and 64-bit distributions to the Linux on POWER developer community.

For more information, visit www.terrasoftsolutions.com

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