Fixstars acquires Terra Soft

one · Nov 11, 2008

Interesting move, Yellow Dog Linux will no longer be a "Linux distribution for PowerPC", but will be 100% committed and optimized to the Cell B.E. architecture.

http://www.fixstars.com/en/company/press/20081111.html

11 November 2008
Fixstars Provides Complete Cell/B.E. Ecosystem Through Acquisition of Terra Soft Solutions

TOKYO, Japan -- 11 November 2008 -- Fixstars Corporation, a pioneering company in Cell Broadband Engine™ based solutions, today announced the acquisition of substantially all the assets of Terra Soft Solutions, the world renowned developer of Yellow Dog Linux. The new subsidiary 'Fixstars Solutions, Inc.', of San Jose, California, maintains the entire Terra Soft staff, product line, and regional offices in Loveland, Colorado.

Terra Soft was founded in 1999 to provide a Linux operating system for the Power architecture family of microprocessors. With its early roots in the Apple PowerPC, Terra Soft grew to become one of the top five Apple Value Added Resellers, uniquely licensed to install an alternative to Mac OS, with customers including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, NASA, DoE labs and top universities.

Kai Staats, former CEO of Terra Soft Solutions, now COO of Fixstars Solutions states, “Terra Soft started with my personal credit card and what in retrospect was an unlikely team to create a Linux distribution: a 17 year old sys admin, FileMaker Pro programmer, graphic designer, and marketing consultant. Dan, Troy, Jake and I threw ourselves into the challenge of building something which we were told (more than once) was impossible. Over one hundred Linux companies came and went, but we always pulled through.”

In the fall of 2005 Terra Soft began its work with Cell under contract with Mercury Computer. A year later Terra Soft expanded its Cell support to the Sony PS3. In 2007, Terra Soft released YDL v6.0 with support for the IBM BladeCenter QS2x family of products.

Through this acquisition, Fixstars will continue to maintain Yellow Dog Linux as the only Linux OS with support for every Cell/B.E. based product on the market, including Fixstars' own GigaAccel 180 and Sony ZEGO BCU-100.

Staats continues, “Our ten years' determination this year opened the door to a merger of teams and talent which for me is the continuation of a dream. Miki-san and I, our teams too, share a common vision and drive for completion of the Power ecosystem and perfection which is now amplified and accelerated by the new Fixstars Solutions.”

Founded in 2002, Fixstars has since 2004 provided application development and optimization services for the Cell Broadband Engine multi-core processor. Fixstars maintains the world's largest dedicated Cell/B.E. development staff. Fixstars' customers include industry leaders and Cell consortium founders Sony, Toshiba, and IBM and companies such as Mizuho Securities, Mitsubishi Research Institute, and Broadcast International.

“A Cell/B.E. software developer and long-time user of Yellow Dog Linux, Fixstars has great faith in Yellow Dog Linux,” said Satoshi Miki, CEO of Fixstars. “This business acquisition allows us to offer a reliable and stable Linux distribution with sense of ease for our customers. I have no doubt that in the expanding Cell/B.E. ecosystem we will offer the best Cell/B.E. solution of the High Performance Computing generation.”
- Financial
- Healthcare & Life Sciences
- Petroleum Exploration
- Digital Media

Fixstars' market specific solutions provide a marked advantage over in-house optimization efforts which historically consume significant resources to achieve the desired performance. The union of the Fixstars and Terra Soft products, services, and engineering expertise forms a complete Cell Broadband Engine ecosystem and client offering, reducing time invested and total cost of ownership.

Fixstars now provides:
- Cell application optimization
- Middleware
- Yellow Dog Linux
- Cell based hardware

About Fixstars Corporation

Fixstars is the pioneering company of the Cell Broadband Engine, high performance multi-core processor. Fixstars enables companies to speed up business by offering astonishing speed and quality software, middleware on Cell/B.E. and hardware equipped Cell/B.E. including the GigaAccel 180 PCIe board with PowerXCell™ 8i, for industries such as Finance, Medical, Manufacturing and Digital media. Founded in 2002, Fixstars is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

For more information, visit www.fixstars.com/en/

Related Information

* Fixstars Solutions Inc.
us.fixstars.com
* Fixstars Solutions Inc. Press Relsase
Fixstars Provides Complete Cell/B.E. Ecosystem Through Acquisition of Terra Soft Solutions

GigaAccel is a trademark of Fixstars Corporation. IBM, PXCAB, and POWER are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Yellow Dog Linux, YDL, Y-HPC, and Y-Film are registered trademarks of Fixstars 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.

Media Contact

Ikuko Hasumi, Manager, Public Relations
Fixstars Corporation
press@fixstars.com
TEL: +81-3-5781-5003
Click to expand...

patsu · Dec 22, 2008

YellowDog Linux 6.1 available for download now: http://us.fixstars.com/products/ydl/delivery.shtml

I am configuring a new dev environment for my Home PS3. Hope to get something going...

Arwin · Aug 7, 2009

Interesting, I think I completely missed this.

I'm installing Yellow Dog Linux 6.2 right now. Will start a new thread for it.

popper · Aug 8, 2009

half the listed mirrors dont even seem to work to a direct url for me heres a working one.
http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/...lowdog/iso/yellowdog-6.2-ppc-DVD_20090629.iso
ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/f...lowdog/iso/yellowdog-6.2-ppc-DVD_20090629.iso

Arwin · Aug 8, 2009

Yeah, I tried to use the Dutch one first, but in the end one of the U.S. ones ended up working for me.

Fixstars acquires Terra Soft

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Fixstars acquires Terra Soft

one Unruly Member Veteran

patsu Legend

Arwin Now Officially a Top 10 Poster Moderator Legend

popper Newcomer

Arwin Now Officially a Top 10 Poster Moderator Legend

Epic Games acquires PSYONIX, developer of Rocket League

Stock Market Rumor: Sony moving to acquire Take-Two Interactive Software

Microsoft acquires studios InXile Entertainment and Obsidian Entertainment (RPGs Galore!)

EA to acquire Respawn Entertainment [Titanfall developers] for $315 to $455 million

Microsoft acquires Simplygon

PS3 as external accelerator - Fixstars CodecSys CE10 'faster than reatime' encoder

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