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Mercury Computer Systems provides high-performance VME, PCI and cPCI multiprocessing systems for digital signal and image processing applications based on the RACEway Interlink Standard. The RACEway standard (RACEway Interlink ANSI/VITA 5-1994), originally developed by Mercury, transforms the PCI and VMEbus from single-transaction buses into scalable, real-time, switched fabrics that are ideal for multiprocessing applications. Mercury's second-generation RACE++ architecture extends the aggregate bandwidth of RACE crossbar switches from 480 Mbyte/sec to 5.1 Gbyte/sec.

Since the summer of 2001, Mercury has been shipping MULTI IDE as the standard development environment for new RACE++ customers. Today, following a rigorous benchmark comparison in which the Green Hills C compiler outperformed Mercury's GNU C compiler across a wide range of customer-critical applications, Mercury has made the decision to recommend Green Hills' C/C++ compilers to new customers as the highest-performance development solution.

"This relationship represents a tremendous validation of our compiler technology," said John Carbone, vice president of marketing at Green Hills Software. "Mercury has always been the PowerPC performance leader, and has traditionally only offered its own GNU-based compilers to maximize hardware performance. This decision from the industry performance leader proves conclusively that we have the best PowerPC/AltiVec compilers in the business."

"We're always looking for ways to provide our customers with enhanced programmer productivity and performance," said Rich Jaenicke, director of product marketing at Mercury. "We currently offer the Green Hills MULTI IDE and C compiler, and we recently completed benchmark testing of their C and C++ compilers. Their C compiler was at least as fast in all cases and up to 38% faster in some cases than our current optimized GNU based C compiler. We also found the Green Hills C++ compiler to be more standards-compliant than our current offering. We are adding the C++ compiler to the Mercury product portfolio and strongly recommend Green Hills Software's C and C++ compilers and MULTI IDE to our customers as the optimal high performance development environment."

Green Hills Software's C/C++ compilers, bundled with the MULTI IDE, take full advantage of the PowerPC's AltiVec parallel processing facilities. The compiler handles all scheduling activity for the PowerPC's integer, floating point, and vector processing units, maximizing efficiency by interleaving instructions between execution units, and rearranging code to hide data load latency. The compiler also analyzes data dependencies and program flow to take advantage of the PowerPC's dual-fetch (for instructions) and out-of-order scheduling abilities, and unrolls loops so that they can be executed in parallel. Green Hills' PowerPC compiler also provides full C/C++ access to the PowerPC's AltiVec extensions, enabling designers to achieve a 2-4x increase in vector processing performance without having to write custom AltiVec assembly code.

In addition to boosting performance, Green Hills Software's C/C++ compilers will enable Mercury users to enjoy the full development capabilities of the MULTI IDE, which automates all aspects of software development for PowerPC processors. Featuring a window-oriented editor, RTOS-aware source-level debugger, and graphical program builder, MULTI IDE also includes a run-time error checker, version control system, and performance profiler.

About Mercury Computer Systems, Inc.

Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: MRCY) is the leading producer of high-performance embedded, real-time digital signal and image processing computer systems. Mercury's products play a critical role in a wide range of applications, transforming sensor data to information for analysis and interpretation. In military reconnaissance and surveillance platforms the company's systems process real-time radar, sonar, and signals intelligence data. Mercury is developing commercial wireless communications solutions in areas such as WCDMA multi-user detection and smart antennas. Mercury's systems are also used in state-of-the-art medical diagnostic imaging devices including MRI, CT, PET, and digital X-ray, and in semiconductor imaging applications including photomask generation and wafer inspection. Based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, Mercury serves customers in North America, Europe and Asia through its direct sales force and a network of subsidiaries and distributors. Visit Mercury on the Web at http://www.mc.com.

More on Green Hills Software

Founded in 1982, Green Hills Software Inc. is the technology leader for real-time operating systems and software development tools for 32- and 64-bit embedded systems. Green Hills Software's royalty-free INTEGRITY® real-time operating system and the ThreadX real-time operating system, fully integrated with its market leading compilers and MULTI® Integrated Development Environment, provide a total development and run-time solution that addresses both deeply embedded and maximum reliability applications.

Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA, with European headquarters in the United Kingdom. For more information on Green Hills Software products, call 805-965-6044, email sales@ghs.com or visit us on the web at www.ghs.com.

Green Hills Software, the Green Hills logo, and MULTI are registered trademarks, and INTEGRITY and the Green Hills Probe are trademarks of Green Hills Software Inc. RACE++ is a trademark of Mercury Computer Systems, Inc.
 
All other trademarks (registered or otherwise) are the property of their respective companies.