Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux for GPU computing

The Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux for CUDA desktop. The Japanese Fixstars Corporation, which specialises in software for the Cell processors, has announced the release of Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux (YDEL) 6.2 for CUDA, the first enterprise Linux OS optimised for GPU computing. Sanford Russell, general manager of GPU Computing at NVIDIA, said that, "With Fixstars providing direct support for CUDA, more researchers, scientists and HPC programmers will be able to take advantage of the performance benefits enabled by massively parallel GPUs."

CUDA, an acronym for Compute Unified Device Architecture, is a parallel computing architecture developed by NVIDIA that uses GPUs to improve the performance of some types of applications. According to Fixstars, the Yellow Dog distribution, based on the free CentOS Red Hat clone, includes "multiple versions of CUDA and can easily switch between them via a setting in a configuration file or an environment variable". Additionally, it features Fixstars' own Eclipse-based graphical IDE for CUDA.

Yellow Dog Linux was once one of the most popular Linux distributions for PowerPC based Macs. After apple switched to X86 hardware, Terra Soft Solutions focused on the Cell processor used in the PlayStation 3 and other computers with Cell processors, including IBM's Cell blades. At the end of 2008, Terrasoft was acquired by Fixstars Corporation.

See also:

• Fixstars to release Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux for CUDA, Fixstars press release.
• PS3 Slim doesn't do Linux, a report from The H.
• Yellow Dog Linux 6.2 released, a report from The H.

(crve)