Terra Soft Launches Quad-Core 'YDL PowerStation'

POWERSTATION RETURNS LOW-COST POWER TO THE WORKSTATION

LOVELAND, Colorado - 10 June 2008 - Terra Soft today launched the YDL 
PowerStation, a robust deskside tower which returns the Power architecture to 
both the workstation and server at an affordable price.

Available exclusively from Terra Soft Solutions, the YDL PowerStation offers 
four 2.5GHz IBM 970MP cores, up to 32GB RAM, dual Gigabit ethernet, four USB 
2.0 ports, integrated ultra-fast SAS with 4 hot-swap bays, both PCI-E and 
PCI-X slots, and support for x86 architecture graphics cards.

The YDL PowerStation is the ideal replacement for the now aging Apple PowerMac 
G5 product family. All Linux code optimized for the former G4 and G5 systems 
will readily migrate to the PowerStation.

The PowerStation running Yellow Dog Linux is a workstation which may play host 
to the diversity of system boards built upon IBM, Freescale, and AMCC Power 
architecture chips. A mainstay of the HPC, personal game, automotive, 
telecommunications, signal and image processing industries, over a decade of 
Power architecture chips share a common, compatible heritage to which the 
PowerStation's 970 cores belong and support.

As a development workstation for embedded systems, the PowerStation provides 
seamless code migration from host to target, reducing development cost and 
time to market. Developers may compile, test, and debug their code on the 
PowerStation and then quickly deploy finished applications on the embedded 
platform.

Development tools include the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), GNU Debugger 
(Gdb), Eclipse, Subversion, and a large collection of libraries and toolkits.

For Cell development too, the PowerStation may be used to prepare and optimize 
code for Cell systems or perform as a headnode for a Sony PS3 or high 
performance IBM QS22 cluster. Yellow Dog Linux includes the IBM SDK, which is 
installed on the PowerStation by default.

The YDL PowerStation improves upon previous industry offerings with an embrace 
of open standards and ready support by Linux. Owen Stampflee, Director of 
Engineering for Terra Soft states, "By design, the PowerStation is a very 
open box, from the firmware to the OS to the graphics card support. While we 
ship the PowerStation with YDL pre-installed, we welcome involvement of the 
greater Linux community, offering our support of all developers who are 
involved."

The YDL PowerStation offers:
 - Quad-core 2.5GHz 970 cores.
 - 8 DDR2 slots for up to 32GB RAM.
 - Extended ATX motherboard.
 - Quiet, easy access to internals.
 - 4 SAS hot-swap drive bays.
 - 2x8 PCIE, 1x16 PCIE, PCI-X.
 - XGI XP 10 graphics card with 1 VGA, 1 DVI port
 - Dual Gigabit ethernet.
 - 4 USB v2.0 ports.
 - 2 RS-232 serial ports.
 - 1 VGA and 1 DVI graphics port

The YDL PowerStation comes pre-installed with Yellow Dog Linux v6.0, the 
default application set includes industry standards Firefox web browser, 
Thunderbird email client, Pidgin IM/IRC client, Ekiga Voice over IP phone 
application, OpenOffice, gThumb and GIMP, RythmBox Music Player, games, 
multimedia applications including the Fluendo codec installer with MP3 
installed by default, and a suite of personal accessories.

	To learn more about the YDL PowerStation, visit:
	http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/powerstation/

	Terra Soft is immediately taking orders for the YDL PowerStation:
	http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/store/

The YDL PowerStation is available for just $1895 and will ship by the close of 
June, 2008.


About Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
As the recognized leader in Linux for Power since 1999, Terra Soft provides 
Yellow Dog Linux board support for Power architecture chip vendors and OEMs; 
turn-key, integrated solutions built upon the PowerStation and systems from 
IBM, Mercury, and Sony; cross-architecture Linux applications for high 
performance computing, including Y-HPC Cluster Construction Suite and the 
Y-Film Asset Management System.

For more information, visit www.terrasoftsolutions.com


PLAYSTATION3 and PS3 are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment 
Inc. Power is a trademark of IBM. Flash is a trademark of Adobe. YDL, Yellow 
Dog Linux, Y-HPC, and Y-Film are registered trademarks of Terra Soft 
Solutions. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Additional 
product and company names mentioned may be trademarks and/or registered 
trademarks of their respective holders.
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Hmm, just $1895.00. It compares favorably to the quad-core G5 Mac in 
price and performance, it seems.

Wow, that's quite affordable.
I've often wondered if there are better price/performance points with non-x86 arch running
Linux, is there a more powerful 'real desktop' solution for less than $3000 USD?

Nice machine it seems :-)

Just, what is this talk about embedded development and PS3 ?
Yes, it may be nice to actually also run the code on a similar CPU with 
the same endianness, but in the end one should do a real cross compile 
nevertheless, otherwise you may end up with dependencies to stuff on the 
host 
system on the embedded target. So I don't really get this argument.

Alex

The specs look rather similar to the box IBM where pimping at last years OLS. Reading the
blurb it sounds like IBM have been looking for a partner to get a PPC based box out there
since the Mac's went to x86. I'm confused by the Cell reference though, the 970 doesn't have
and Cell SPU's on it does it?

> the 970 doesn't have and Cell SPU's on it does it?

No. The 970MP 2.5GHz (which is used here) is the CPU that was also used in the last available
PowerMac Quad.