Petapath invited to speak at HP-CAST

PRESS RELEASE

2 May 2009

Petapath (Bristol, UK), has been invited to speak at the Hewlett-Packard for
Consortium Advanced Scientific and Technical (HP-CAST) computing conference in
Madrid, Spain (May 10 - 13, 2009).

Petapath and HP are working together to develop a prototype petaflop/s systems
as part of the pan-European Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE)
(www.prace-project.eu).

Petapath's presentation, "Programming for high-performance heterogeneous
systems", will use the PRACE prototype system to compare and contrast current
development practice using proprietary tools versus the new open standard of
OpenCL.

"One of the remaining challenges is that performance characteristics of OpenCL-
targetable platforms will differ, and that tuning an application will require a
degree of system specific information which the application will have to
manage," says Dairsie Latimer, co-founder and CTO of Petapath. "Heterogeneous
systems are now becoming increasingly pervasive at both the top and bottom of
the high performance compute market. Accelerators can deliver significant
performance and cost advantages but this is at the expense of the challenges
involved in using them effectively. The industry is moving towards open
standards which users will embrace as an enabling link in cross platform
heterogeneous software development."

Petapath is also taking part in a tutorial - "Software environments for
accelerators" – which will have presentations by HP partners offering
development tools and libraries for accelerators.

"When graphics cards and FPGAs started being used to accelerate computation, the
available development tools and environments were not intended for this use and
were unfamiliar to the typical scientist or engineer," says Michal Harasimiuk,
CEO of Petapath. "Now compilers, tools, and libraries are emerging for both
these and other accelerator technologies that make them much more approachable
by users with a background in programming high-performance computing
applications."

- END -

About Petapath
Petapath is a supplier of heterogeneous computing solutions in the high-
performance computing sector. Its expertise and technology dramatically
increases computing performance with only a moderate increase in power
dissipation. Petapath's software technology can be applied to any application
using high-performance computing, from banking and entertainment, to scientific
and mathematical modelling. Petapath's technology is a cost-effective, energy-
efficient way of increasing computer performance into the petaflop/s regime.
www.petapath.com

About HP-CAST
The Hewlett-Packard Consortium for Advanced Scientific and Technical (HP-CAST)
computing users group works to increase the capabilities of HP solutions for
large-scale, scientific and technical computing. HP-CAST provides guidance to HP
on the essential development and support issues for such systems. HP-CAST
meetings typically include corporate briefings and presentations by HP
executives and technical staff (under NDA), and discussions of customer issues
related to high-performance technical computing.
www.hp.com


Press contact:
Michal Harasimiuk
michal@petapath.com
+44(0)117 911 7544
+44(0)778 718 5248