Absoft Announces Latest High Performance Fortran 95 Compiler for 32-bit Linux

New Optimizations Yield Superior F90 Benchmark and Application Performance


ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich., May 19, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- Absoft Corporation today announced general availability of its high performance Fortran 95 Compiler v9.0 for 32-bit (IA32 and AMD32) processors running Linux. Absoft's new compiler contains many new optimizations including improved cache utilization, additional intrinsic function in-lining, advanced loop unrolling, and optimizations taking advantage of scalar Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2). Industry standard benchmarks indicate up to a 35% performance improvement over previous releases.

"We didn't optimize this product just for laboratory benchmarks. This Fortran compiler has rock solid reliability on real-world customer applications and is a clear performance leader in the 32-bit Linux space," said Wood Lotz, President of Absoft. "Not only is this compiler very fast we believe it is also the most reliable Fortran compiler on the market, benefiting from over a decade of real-world customer usage and acceptance," continued Lotz.

In addition to producing the fastest total runtimes on standard F90 benchmarks and real-world customer applications, Absoft's new Fortran 95 v9.0 includes Fx2, the best Fortran debugger available and excellent technical support at no additional charge. Further, the product suite installs on any leading Linux distribution without modification and because Absoft Fortran compilers provide the industry's best support for legacy code, re-hosting existing applications from other platforms requires little more than a recompilation. Other improvements include shared libraries, Dwarf2 debug information by default, IEEE_ARITHMETIC, IEEE_EXCEPTIONS and support for several Fortran 2003 language specifications. Tools for automatic code parallelization, processing OpenMP directives and debugging in MPI and cluster environments are also available. The performance improvements to the 32-bit compiler have also been incorporated into Absoft's Fortran 95 compiler v9.0 for 64-bit Linux running on the popular AMD Opteron processors and are available as a Service Pack at no charge to registered Absoft customers.

"Absoft leads the industry in price/performance solutions with flexible licensing policies, powerful debugging, and free support and is the only company offering source compatible Fortran compilers for all of today's leading computing platforms," added Lotz. "Our powerful and unique combination of superior performance, reliability, legacy code support, compatibility, and technical support make Absoft products the most attractive solutions for customers looking to migrate existing applications from scalar, single processor platforms to high-performance multi-processor solutions such as small or large clusters."

Absoft's Fortran95 compiler v9.0 for 32-bit Linux is available to commercial customers for $899. Special pricing is available for academic, cluster, and volume purchases. Product details and ordering information are at http://www.absoft.com/Products/Compilers/Fortran/Linux/IA32/linux32.html.

About Absoft Corporation

Based in Rochester Hills, Michigan, Absoft Corporation is a world leader in software development tools. Since 1980 Absoft has led the Fortran community by introducing the first commercial 32-bit Fortran compilers for Macintosh, Windows-NT, Linux and High Performance Computing environments. Absoft business partners include: IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Motorola, Cray Research, Sun, Silicon Graphics and MIPS. Absoft is the sole provider of source-compatible Fortran and debugging solutions for all of today's leading computing platforms. Major educational institutions, research laboratories, and Fortune 2000 companies use Absoft tools globally.

For more information about Absoft, visit http://www.absoft.com, e-mail sales@absoft.com, or call 248-853-0050.


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