ECONOMICS

AMD today announced its membership in the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), demonstrating a continued and strengthening commitment between the development community and AMD. AMD also announced recognition of the leadership role taken by the open-source community to optimize software that allows customers to deploy the powerful performance of the AMD Opteron(tm), AMD Athlon(tm) 64 FX, and AMD Athlon 64 processors. "The open-source community is made up of visionaries and technologists in the trenches who see firsthand the dramatic performance gains possible with AMD64," said Marty Seyer, vice president and general manager of AMD's Microprocessor Business Unit. "We've led the way in making pervasive 32- and 64-bit processing widely available with AMD64. In turn, the skilled developers in this open-source community have embraced the AMD64 platform, making it possible for many of the world's greatest computers to tap this powerful technology today." "Open-source developers have a long-standing commitment to innovative technology," said Linus Torvalds." By incorporating expertise from individuals and industry alike, Linux has extended its reach through the x86 platform on a global basis. 64-bit extensions represent another major step forward, and the open-source community was quick to recognize that potential." OSDL is a global consortium dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux and the support of open-source solutions in the data center and on the desktop. "With the rapid increase of Linux deployments on AMD technology, AMD will be significant contributors to OSDL's continued success," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL. "We're pleased that AMD is joining OSDL as they will contribute a wealth of knowledge and expertise towards our mission of advancing Linux in the enterprise." Some of the most notable open-source software projects for AMD64 range from high-performance computing and enterprise applications to small business and consumer software. AMD recognizes the support from leading Linux distributors Red Hat, SUSE LINUX, Mandrakesoft and Turbolinux; Linux community projects like cAos, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo and Tao; and, UNIX projects NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. "SUSE has long been an innovator in the 64-bit Linux market and drove the Linux port of AMD64 in early 2000, enabling enterprise customers who were looking for performance enhancements available only through the 64-bit architecture to benefit from the stability and security of Linux," said Markus Rex, general manager, SUSE LINUX for Novell. "As a result, SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server for AMD64 is expertly tuned for AMD Opteron processors, combining leading Linux technology with a powerful architecture for high-performance computing." "Red Hat has worked closely with AMD to help ensure that Red Hat Enterprise Linux allows users to fully utilize the power and flexibility of AMD Opteron processor-based systems," said Mike Evans, vice president of Partner Development at Red Hat. "We are committed to providing our customers support for the most advanced technology available. Red Hat and AMD will continue to work together to move 64-bit computing on Linux into the enterprise." In addition, open-source projects that continue to be optimized for AMD64 include the GNU Compiler Collection and debuggers, MPICH, as well as LinuxBIOS for cluster configurations, and Apache, Sendmail and MySQL IT infrastructure applications.