Cray has acquired the PathScale Compiler Suite from SiCortex. Cray plans to leverage some of the PathScale intellectual property to enhance Cray's own compiler offerings over time. The company will contribute other parts of the PathScale intellectual property to the open source community through an alliance with NetSyncro.com, an organization of compiler engineers with strong open source ties. NetSyncro.com will continue developing the PathScale Compiler Suite, provide support for users of the software and will rebrand the effort under the original PathScale name.

"PathScale's EKO compiler suite has been a popular choice in the HPC community since 2004," said PathScale Engineering Director Fred Chow. "Our performance stands out amongst the competition and we continue to raise the standard for the industry. We thank Cray for supporting PathScale and for fulfilling the engineers' wishes to continue their work. The new PathScale will focus on improving product delivery, quality of support, and porting to new platforms to substantially expand our impact in the open source community. We will also focus not only on benchmark results, but collaboration with important open source projects and helping developers tune for performance."

Cray supports three compiler options for the Cray XT line of supercomputers: The Portland Group's PGI Server Fortran/C/C++ Compilers and Tools for Linux; the PathScale Compiler Suite, which includes high-performance 64-bit C, C++ and Fortran compilers for Linux-based environments; and the Cray Compiler Environment (CCE). The Portland Group continues to be the primary compiler partner for Cray systems, with both PathScale and CCE providing a more comprehensive user environment where required.