PathScale Inc. was a company that developed a highly optimizing C, C++, and Fortran compiler suite for the

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

architectures. It derives from the SGI compilers for the

MIPS architecture MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA)Price, Charles (September 1995). ''MIPS IV Instruction Set'' (Revision 3.2), MIPS Technologies, ...

R10000 The R10000, code-named "T5", is a RISC microprocessor implementation of the MIPS IV instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by MIPS Technologies, Inc. (MTI), then a division of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). The chief designers are Chris Ro ...

processor, called MIPSPro.

History

PathScale was founded in 2001 as Key Research and its original mission was to develop clustered

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

server solutions based on a low-cost 64-bit design. In late 2003 the company came out of

stealth mode In business, stealth mode is a company's temporary state of secretiveness, usually undertaken to avoid alerting competitors to a pending product launch or another business initiative. When an entire company is in stealth mode it may attempt to ...

and was called PathScale. The word PathScale is descriptive of the company's original design goals for clusters. In early 2003 with the success of the

AMD Opteron Opteron is Advanced Micro Devices, AMD's x86 former server and workstation Microprocessor, processor line, and was the first processor which supported the AMD64 instruction set architecture (known generically as x86-64 or AMD64). It was release ...

, efforts at the company switched to other products like high-performance 64-bit

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

s. The seeds of the company were sown in the early 1980s at the

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...

, where four of the company's seven founders worked together building the S1 supercomputer. The first chief technical officer at PathScale, Tom McWilliams, had the initial idea for the company and incorporated in July 2001. He added three of his LLNL colleagues (Jeff Rubin, Jeff Broughton, Fred Chow) to the company shortly thereafter. McWilliams had been a company founder at

Valid Logic Systems Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (stylized as cādence), headquartered in San Jose, California, is an American multinational computational software company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc. The company produces software, ...

and Key Computer and worked at SGI,

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, ...

and

Amdahl Corporation Amdahl Corporation was an information technology company which specialized in IBM mainframe-compatible computer products, some of which were regarded as supercomputers competing with those from Cray Research. Founded in 1970 by Gene Amdahl, a f ...

. Chow was formerly chief scientist for compilers at SGI and MIPS. PathScale Inc. was acquired and re-sold several times. First by QLogic in February 2006, for about $109 million. A network technology called InfiniPath was marketed as TrueScale by QLogic, and then sold to

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

and became the basis of Omni-Path. The compiler technology was acquired by

SiCortex SiCortex was a supercomputer manufacturer founded in 2003 and headquartered in Clock Tower Place, Maynard, Massachusetts. On 27 May 2009, ''HPCwire'' reported that the company had shut down its operations, laid off most of its staff, and is seekin ...

in August 2007, and by

Cray Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed i ...

in August 2009, when SiCortex was

liquidated Liquidation is the process in accounting by which a company is brought to an end in Canada, United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and many other countries. The assets and property of the company are redistr ...

. Cray owned the intellectual property until March 2012 when a new PathScale Inc. acquired all assets. On June 13, 2011, PathScale announced that the EKOPath 4 compiler suite would become open source software and licensed under the

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

.https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTU2OA More Details From The EKOPath Open-Source Launch The suite contains: * C, C++, and Fortran 77/90/95/2003 (partial) compilers * Complete support for

OpenMP OpenMP (Open Multi-Processing) is an application programming interface (API) that supports multi-platform shared-memory multiprocessing programming in C, C++, and Fortran, on many platforms, instruction-set architectures and operating sy ...

2.5 (including WORKSHARE) * Complete support for 64-bit and 32-bit x86 compilation * Code generation for AMD64 ABI, AMD Opteron, and Intel EM64T * Optimized AMD Core Math Library * Advanced

multi-threaded In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest sequence of programmed instructions that can be managed independently by a scheduler, which is typically a part of the operating system. The implementation of threads and processes dif ...

debugger PathDB * Compatible with

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any ...

/ gcc

toolchain In software, a toolchain is a set of programming tools that is used to perform a complex software development task or to create a software product, which is typically another computer program or a set of related programs. In general, the tools for ...

and popular third-party debuggers * Supported on

SUSE SUSE ( , ) is a German-based multinational open-source software company that develops and sells Linux products to business customers. Founded in 1992, it was the first company to market Linux for enterprise. It is the developer of SUSE Linux En ...

, Red Hat, and

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', '' Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All th ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pathscale C++ compilers C (programming language) compilers Cray Fortran compilers

History

See also

References

Further reading

External links