PROCESSORS

SAN DIEGO - Entropia, Inc., the leading provider of PC grid computing solutions, today announced immediate availability of DCGrid 5.1, a powerful and cost-effective PC grid computing platform that provides high performance computing capabilities by aggregating the unused processing cycles of networks of existing Windows-based PCs. Version 5.1 builds on DCGrid's next-generation platform architecture to further enhance application performance and broaden the set of applications that can be enabled today. DCGrid 5.1 further optimizes application performance, providing advanced resource sharing, automation, and enhanced grid management capabilities to take maximum advantage of grid resources. DCGrid 5.1 also continues Entropia's history of providing the strongest application integration and security available in any PC grid computing solution. "PC grids are being used in the life sciences, manufacturing and financial services industries, but what has historically held them back from widespread enterprise use is application support, ease of management, and strong security," noted Joe Clabby, president, Bloor Research North America. "DCGrid 5.1, with its focus on these areas, gets us one major step closer to acceptance of large-scale inter- and intra-enterprise grids." As a grid computing platform, DCGrid delivers optimum results for all applications, whether the application was developed proprietarily in-house, by a third party, or open sourced. Likewise, maximum performance is achieved whether the application is compute-intensive, data-intensive, or both, and irrespective of internal data management and access policies. With DCGrid, many applications that were never intended or optimized for distributed computing can run efficiently and effectively, allowing organizations to harness the power of grid computing with no disruption or reworking of current policies or operating procedures. "With any new technology, the number one adoption barrier is whether you can painlessly get your applications up and running on the new platform," said Bill Philbin, senior vice president of product development and chief operating officer at Entropia. "DCGrid 5.1 removes this hurdle; it is the only solution that provides organizations with the means to quickly and easily enable any native Win32 application for PC grid computing-without unpleasant and lengthy code retooling or porting. While DCGrid leads the industry in rapidly enabling applications for PC grids, 5.1 further extends its technology advantage and delivers enhanced application performance, permitting the use of applications that otherwise would not be suitable for grid computing." New And Enhanced Functionality Extends Enterprise Reach DCGrid 5.1 introduces these advancements: • Enhanced fault tolerant checkpoint/restart capabilities enables applications with lengthy compute times to run optimally on a PC grid, even in instances of intermittent access, such as is the case with laptop resources. • External resource and database access supports a broader range of applications, including those whose data size, structure, or location are not traditionally suited to distributed data models. • Asynchronous data preparation allows separation of job preparation and job submittal, so that these tasks can be individually and optimally managed without negatively impacting one another. • Enhanced enterprise readiness ensures easy integration within any corporate IT environment. DCGrid's available XML and Linux interfaces support Web Services and continue its ongoing sponsorship of grid computing standards.