Altair Engineering’s PBS Professional 8.0 Released for IBM Blue Gene Architecture

Altair Engineering, Inc., a leading global provider of technology and services that strengthen client innovation and decision-making, today announced that PBS Professional 8.0 is now generally available for the IBM System Blue Gene Solution. PBS Professional 8.0 adds support for massive IBM Blue Gene systems through new virtual node functionality. Blue Gene customers can now have one common workload management solution across their entire high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure.

“Blue Gene systems offer a unique combination of ultra-scale performance, and efficient use of power and floor space,” said Herb Schultz, director of Deep Computing Marketing, IBM. “Altair’s highly scalable and resilient PBS Professional will ensure that customers are maximizing the value of these critical resources at all times.”

PBS Professional is an advanced workload management solution for HPC environments. The software maximizes the utilization of computing resources by intelligently scheduling and managing computational workloads. By increasing the efficiency of the hardware and software resources, PBS Professional reduces total cost of ownership and provides true business value to grid computing customers in a variety of industries.

“PBS Professional leads the industry in scalability, availability and resiliency, and we anticipate it will be a very popular workload management solution for Blue Gene customers,” said Michael Humphrey, vice president of Altair’s PBS GridWorks business unit. “Releasing PBS Professional for IBM Blue Gene is a natural extension of our longstanding relationship with IBM. Blue Gene has established a new level of scalability, and PBS Professional allows customers to more efficiently and easily harness this power.”

Blue Gene is a unique computer architecture that is the result of a five-year project dedicated to building a new family of supercomputers. Optimized for bandwidth, scalability and the ability to handle large amounts of data, the computers consume a fraction of the power and floor space required by competing systems. The extremely efficient, ultra-scalable Blue Gene is currently listed as Number One on the TOP500 list of supercomputers, a compilation that is updated twice a year and available on www.top500.org

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is one of a select group of organizations that has successfully implemented the beta version of PBS Professional 8.0. Located in Switzerland, EPFL is one of the major European centers of teaching and research in information technology.

About IBM Blue Gene Solution
Since IBM announced the commercial availability of the IBM System Blue Gene Solution, a commercial version of the research project, in November 2004, a record number of 28 Blue Gene systems have appeared on the TOP500 list. Based on IBM's Power architecture, the IBM System Blue Gene Solution is optimized for bandwidth, scalability and the ability to handle large amounts of data, while consuming a fraction of the power and floor space required by today's fastest systems. IBM and its teammates are exploring a growing list of HPC applications, including life sciences, financial modeling, hydrodynamics, quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics, astronomy and space research, and climate modeling for Blue Gene solutions.

For more information, visit www-03.ibm.com/servers/deepcomputing/bluegene.html

About PBS GridWorks
PBS GridWorks provides a suite of technologies that allows enterprise clients to maximize their ROI on computing assets through policy-based grid technology. The suite includes OpenPBS, PBS Professional, e-Compute and Scali Manage. PBS GridWorks products and services are widely deployed within a number of industries, including manufacturing, government, academia, life sciences, energy, digital media and finance. Altair’s mature partner network ensures seamless integration and ease of deployment.

About Altair Engineering
Altair Engineering, Inc. strengthens client innovation and decision-making through technology that optimizes the analysis, management and visualization of business and engineering information. Privately held with more than 1,000 employees, Altair has offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia/Pacific. With a 20-year-plus track record for product design, advanced engineering software and grid computing technologies, Altair consistently delivers a competitive advantage to customers in a broad range of industries. To learn more, please visit www.altair.com