Terra Soft Assists Colsa to Gain 15 of Top500.org

LOVELAND, Colorado - 30 November 2005 - Terra Soft Solutions, the leading developer of integrated Power Architecture Linux solutions is pleased to announce its role in COLSA Corporation's success with MACH5, the world’s largest Apple Xserve-based cluster.

In June 2004, COLSA, located in Huntsville, Alabama, began construction of their 1,566-node Apple Xserve G5 cluster for the United Stated Army. In late 2004, COLSA contracted Terra Soft to help prepare a system-wide Linux installation using the then beta Y-HPC cluster construction and management suite.

Terra Soft's David Smith worked on-site with COLSA engineers for three days in order to prepare a multi-tier system first for rapid node replication and secondly to maximize system performance. Significant gains were recognized with their combined efforts: the Top500.org benchmark, Linpack, achieved 16.18 Tflops on the Xserve, vaulting it to the 15th fastest computer in the world.

Jeff Highfield, senior engineer at the Huntsville COLSA facility states, "Terra Soft was highly responsive to our needs, providing on-site assistance with little advance notice and on-going support for the past year. While we ultimately used a mixture of Terra Soft's offerings and in-house developed code, the Terra Soft team and their Y-HPC product provided the foundation for our exceptional placement on the Top500.org list."

COLSA has shown their continuing dedication to researching the best possible solution for their cluster and has devoted significant resources to the effort. Software and systems engineers at COLSA have committed their time and two full racks of G5 Xserves to assist Terra Soft with on-going Y-HPC development and testing. Terra Soft's co-founder & CEO Kai Staats offers, "We are pleased to continue to work with COLSA to not only improve their cluster performance, but also further the real world value of Y-HPC as a cluster construction and management suite."

The next version of Y-HPC will be distributed to YDL.net Pro account holders following the near-future release of Yellow Dog Linux v4.1.


About Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
Terra Soft is a leading Integrated Solutions Provider with proven expertise in the Power Architecture and Linux OS platform. As a Mercury, Apple, and Genesi VAR, and IBM Business Partner, Terra Soft provides turnkey and build-to-order portables, desktop workstations, HA servers, and HPC clusters. Terra Soft's Y-HPC 64-bit OS and cluster construction suite is widely accepted as a preferred platform for Xserve clusters.

Terra Soft's recent efforts include the launch of Y-Bio at SC2005, a cross-architecture life sciences package; and movement on the world's first commercial, Linux Board Support Package for the Cell processor, in collaboration with Mercury Computer.

For more information, visit www.terrasoftsolutions.com


About COLSA Corporation
COLSA, in business for over 25 years, supplies the Department of Defense, NASA, and other government agencies with system engineering and high performance computing (HPC) services. COLSA manages three major HPC facilities for the Army, Defense Intelligence Agency, and NASA in the Huntsville, Alabama, vicinity. These long-term contracts are a result of COLSA's customer focused reputation for over 97% HPC availability and cost efficiency coupled with COLSA's future focused HPC research efforts.

For more information, visit www.colsa.com


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