Altair Engineering's PBS Professional(TM) to Be Released for IBM(R) Blue Gene(R) Solution

TROY, Mich., Nov. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Altair Engineering, Inc., a global leader in innovative product development, advanced engineering software and grid computing technology, today announced that it will port the PBS Professional(TM) workload management solution to IBM's(R) Blue Gene(R) platform. Altair plans to make PBS Professional generally available on the Blue Gene platform during the first half of 2006. PBS Professional optimizes computing resources by aggregating and intelligently scheduling computational workloads through a robust, scalable open architecture software solution.

"Porting and releasing PBS Professional for the IBM Blue Gene platform is a natural extension of our marketing and resale agreements completed earlier this year with IBM," said Michael Humphrey, vice president of Altair's Enterprise Computing business unit. "PBS Professional technology includes industry-leading scalability, availability and resiliency capabilities, as proven by our strong presence in the TOP500 supercomputers list. We anticipate PBS Professional will be a very popular workload management solution with Blue Gene customers."

Released commercially last year, Blue Gene is a unique, new computer architecture that is the result of a five-year project dedicated to building a new family of supercomputers. Optimized for bandwidth, scalability and the ability to handle large amounts of data, the computers consume a fraction of the power and floor space required by competing systems. The extremely efficient, ultra-scalable Blue Gene is currently listed as Number One on Supercomputing's TOP500 list, a compilation that is updated twice a year.

PBS Professional is an open workload management solution for grid computing environments, Linux clusters, and distributed servers and workstations. The software optimizes the utilization of computing resources by intelligently scheduling and managing computational workload in a number of industries, including manufacturing, energy, financial, government research, weather forecasting, life sciences and digital media. By increasing the efficiency of the hardware and software resources, PBS Professional reduces total cost of ownership and provides true business value to grid computing customers.

"Successful deployments of high-performance computing not only require scalability but also a dedication to efficient management of those systems," said Herb Schultz, program director, Deep Computing, IBM. "Blue Gene systems offer the combination of performance, space efficiency and innovations in cooling systems. Customers who implement solutions such as Altair's highly scalable and resilient PBS Professional can better manage their massive computational workloads and ensure they are maximizing the value of these critical resources at all times."

"EPFL has successfully deployed PBS Professional to manage the computational workload on our traditional HPC systems," said Jean-Jacques Dumont, strategic projects coordinator for EPFL. "After we received our new IBM Blue Gene system, we contracted Altair to investigate the availability of PBS Professional for this platform. We look forward to having PBS Professional manage EPFL's entire workload across our heterogeneous HPC data center." About Altair Engineering

Through product design consulting, advanced engineering software and high- performance computing (HPC) technologies, Altair Engineering increases innovation for clients around the globe. Founded in 1985 and privately held with offices throughout 12 countries, Altair's unparalleled knowledge and expertise in product development and manufacturing extend throughout North America, Europe and Asia. As the developer of Altair(R) HyperWorks(R) - The Engineering Framework for Product Design(TM), Altair is the leading provider of high-end, open CAE software solutions for modeling, visualization, optimization and process automation. The company's grid computing software, PBS Professional(TM), is a workload management solution for HPC environments, Linux clusters and desktop cycle harvesting that delivers an ROI within one year. For detailed information about Altair, visit http://www.altair.com .