Processor giant Intel Corp. has acquired Waterloo, Ont.-based RapidMind Inc., according to the latter company’s Web site.
RapidMind offers a development platform to develop parallel applications to run on multi-core processors. It was launched in 2004 to commercialize the University of Waterloo’s Sh project, a programming interface for graphics processor units (GPU) on video cards.
Intel will continue to sell and support RapidMind products, according to a blog post by Intel parallelism expert James Reinders.
“RapidMind proved itself to be an innovative company with advanced technology for helping software developers with data parallel programming for multi-core processors and accelerators,” Reinders wrote. “Their joining Intel will let us do even greater things together.”
Reinders said the RapidMind technology fits into a suite of Intel parallel processing technology that includes OpenMP 3.0 support for its Fortran and C++ compliers for Linux, Windows and Mac OSX, Intel Threading Building Blocks, and Intel Parallel Studio for Visual Studio programmers. Intel will beta its Ct technology – which abstracts data-parallel programming from the hardware – later this year, and will integrate products from RapidMind and Cilk Arts Inc.’s Cilk++ technology in the new year, according to Reinders.
A blog posting on RapidMind’s Web site reads in part: “With Intel, our shared vision for enabling parallelism will lead to strengthening our software developer tools for multi-core and many-core processors and accelerators. Later this year, we will provide more details about the integration of the RapidMind platform and Intel software products and technologies, including the Intel Ct technology for data parallelism.”
Terms of the deal weren’t released. Intel could not supply a spokesperson to discuss the deal. Phone calls to RapidMind hadn’t been returned at press time.
Air Canada, Big Blue team on iPhone app
Air Canada has become the first North American airline to release an application for Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPod Touch.
The free application will allow users to pick up electronic boarding passes, track flight information, book flights and arrange car rentals, according to the airline.
The application was built at IBM Corp.’s Toronto innovation centre.
Centennial chosen as Cisco’s security training centre
Centennial College in Toronto has been named Canada’s exclusive English-language CCNA security instructor training centre by Cisco Systems Inc.
The Cisco CCNA security curriculum is an introduction of security concepts and skills needed to install, troubleshoot and monitor network devices.
Centennial will begin offering the courses for students and instructors this fall.
