Sun Expands Leadership in
High-PerformanceComputing: Acquires Dakota
Scientific Software, Inc.!
PALO ALTO, Calif., June 24, 1998 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc.
today advanced the high-performance leadership of the SolarisTM
operating environment with the acquisition of Dakota Scientific
Software Inc. (DSS), a leading supplier of high-performance
software components for scientific and engineering applications.
DSS has been an important partner to Sun for years, providing the
SunTM Performance LibraryTM, a component of the SunTM
Performance WorkShopTM Fortran product line. The acquisition
reinforces Sun's strategy to provide the finest software
development tools for the scientific and engineering community. It
will also focus the outstanding technical talents of the DSS staff on
improving the Solaris operating environment for high-performance
computing applications.
"Sun has clearly come of age in high-performance computing and
become one of the industry leaders in the high-performance
computing market," said Jack Dongarra of the University of
Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "Second only to
SGI/Cray, Sun systems running the Solaris operating environment
have the largest installed base worldwide at the top 500
supercomputing sites."
In addition, Sun also announced today that the most recent Top 500
list of the world's most powerful supercomputer sites identified
SunTM HPC 10000 (also known as the StarfireTM) server as the
leading installed system.
"In order to continue driving success in the high-performance
computing space, we felt it was time to increase our staffing for this
important area. Our first choice was to bring Dakota's great people
in-house to continue development of Sun's leading numerical
library," said Joe Keller, Director of Marketing and Support for
Sun's Developer Tools Products. "The expertise that DSS brings to
Sun in the development of scientific and numerically-intensive
software for the Solaris operating environment will be invaluable as
we move forward with our high-performance computing product
line."
The DSS numerical libraries are collections of computer code that
provide highly-tuned versions of popular subroutines which are
used in the development of application software. For example, the
Sun Performance Library includes tuned versions of routines in the
very popular "BLAS" (Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines) library,
which are used in a wide variety of numerical applications for
engineering, petroleum exploration and financial portfolio analysis.
These highly-tuned routines can enable application developers to
attain maximum floating-point performance for the crucial parts of
their applications under the Solaris operating environment.
"We are very happy to be the newest members of the Sun family,"
said Diane Boucher, President of DSS. "This acquisition gives us a
critical role in the ongoing success of Sun's high-performance
computing products, as well as its market-leading Solaris operating
environment."
About Sun Performance WorkShop
SunTM Performance WorkShopTM software provides an integrated
environment designed to speed software development of
high-performance Fortran 90, Fortran 77 and C applications, while
taking maximum advantage of multi-processing systems.
Specifically designed for the needs of high-performance computing,
Sun Performance WorkShop allows developers to see and debug
complex data arrays or algorithms. Also, with SunTM WorkShopTM
TeamWare software, teams of developers can increase their
productivity by collaborating on large-scale development projects.
Other Sun WorkShop Products
In addition to Sun Performance WorkShop, the SunTM WorkShopTM
product line also includes the award-winning JavaTM WorkShopTM
and SunTM Visual WorkShopTM C++ development tools. For more
information on Sun WorkShop products, visit http://www.sun.com/workshop.
Pursuant to the terms of the acquisition, Sun acquired all of the
outstanding stock of DSS.
About Dakota Scientific Software
Formed in 1992, Dakota Scientific Software, Inc. focuses on
the
application of advanced supercomputer technology to the
development of the fastest math software available for desktop
machines. Since its inception, Dakota Scientific has been successful
in delivering the fastest math library available for Sun's Solaris
operating environment for both SPARCTM and Intel, as well as
support for Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT. Today Dakota
has a balanced offering of products, consulting, and contract
programming serving the demanding needs of users in the
high-performance computing market. Additional information on
Dakota Scientific Software is located at http://www.scisoft.com.
About Sun Microsystems Since its inception in 1982, a singular
vision, "The Network Is The ComputerTM," has propelled Sun
Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW), to its position as a leading
provider of high quality hardware, software and services for
establishing enterprise-wide intranets and expanding the power of
the Internet. With more than $9 billion in annual revenues, Sun can
be found in more than 150 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com. @Macarlo, Inc. @Macarlo's Shareware & Web OS/2 Java Lobby Member
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