AUSTRALIAN STARTUP
LICENSES TECHNOLOGY TO MAJOR US SUPERCOMPUTING VENDOR (October
2007)
Australian software startup, Guardsoft, has entered into an
agreement with Cray Inc. to license Guardsoft’s novel ‘Guard’ debugging
technology for use in Cray’s Cascade program. Partially
funded by $250 million from the US Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA), Cray will develop a revolutionary new
supercomputer based on the company's Adaptive Supercomputing
vision aimed at integrating a range of processing technologies
into a single scalable platform.
Guardsoft is based on innovative research and development led
by Monash University’s Professor
David Abramson in the
Faculty of Information
Technology. It uses a new technique called ‘relative’ debugging,
which allows programmers to trace errors introduced into software
as it is modified, or ported from one system to another. Unlike
traditional debugging techniques, relative debugging compares
the execution of a new program with a reference version that
is known to work.
“Relative debugging is orders of magnitude faster than
existing approaches because the programmer doesn’t have
to understand all the details of the code,” said Prof.
Abramson. “This is particularly valuable when the person
performing the debugging is not the original developer.”
Cray selected the new technology as a tool to aid application
developers in porting existing programs to Cray supercomputers.
“This approach will allow our users to locate errors quickly
when existing sequential programs are parallelised, or when they
are changed during code development,” said Steve Scott,
chief technology officer for Cray. “This new technology
has the potential to enhance programmer productivity substantially,
and complements the other tools we are developing in the Cascade
program.”
About DARPA and the HPCS Program
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is the central
research and development organization for the Department
of Defense (DoD). The agency manages and directs selected
basic
and applied research and development projects for DoD, and
pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are
both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances
for
traditional military roles and missions. The High Productivity
Computing Systems program aims at providing a new generation
of cost-effective, scalable, productive systems for national
security and industrial users. The first two phases of HPCS
were devoted to critical concept studies and assessments,
preliminary research and development, and risk reduction
engineering activities.
Phase III involves a development and demonstration effort
over four years. Go to www.darpa.mil for more information.
About Cray Inc.
As a global leader
in supercomputing, Cray provides highly advanced supercomputers
and world-class services and support to government,
industry and academia. Cray technology enables scientists
and engineers to achieve remarkable breakthroughs by accelerating
performance, improving efficiency and extending the capabilities
of their most demanding applications. Cray's Adaptive Supercomputing
vision will result in innovative next-generation products
that
integrate diverse processing technologies into a unified
architecture, allowing customers to surpass today's limitations
and meeting
the market's continued demand for realized performance. Go
to www.cray.com for more information.
About Guardsoft
Guardsoft is a privately
owned and operated company in Melbourne, Australia (ACN 096 853
093). Its core intellectual property
was developed as a result of research conducted at Australian
universities Griffith University in Brisbane and Monash University
in Melbourne. Guardsoft’s products use a novel data comparison
mechanism that is protected by patent, and flows from projects
funded from a variety of public and private sources, including
Australian Research Council Discovery grants. It currently
produces versions of the software for a range of platforms,
including Linux, IBM’s Eclipse platform and Microsoft’s
Visual Studio .NET. For more information, contact Guardsoft
on info@guardsoft.com or go to www.guardsoft.com
