Mandrakesoft upgrades Linux for supercomputing
Mandrakesoft, a French Linux seller that's seen hard times competing with better-known brands such as Red Hat, has updated a product for high-performance technical computing.
A new version of the company's Mandrakelinux Clustering product includes support for the InfiniBand high-speed networking technology used to link numerous lower-end machines into a single computational engine, the company said Wednesday.
One software user is Hewlett-Packard, whose 240-processor HPC1 computing cluster can be used by customers in the manufacturing, bioinformatics, and oil and gas industries. That system employs an InfiniBand switch from Voltaire.
Mandrake isn't the only one interested in the market. Novell is planning a lower-priced version of its Suse Linux for clustering, and Microsoft hopes to make a foray into the Linux-dominated area as well.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
