The goal of the CLIC project is to provide a powerful, simple and easy to install Linux Clustering system by unifying the various stages of installation, interconnect layer set-up and parallel applications deployment.

The project, released under the General Public License (GPL), is being conducted in three stages:

- Phase 1: Develop and release a specialized Linux distribution that contains everything needed to quickly deploy a ready-to-run cluster. The first release of this Linux distribution is now available for download and testing.

- Phase 2 (early 2003): Release of specialized administration, control and monitoring tools for the clustering solution, plus added support for Itanium 2 architecture.

- Phase 3 (end of 2003): Release of specialized tools and applications for development in parallel environment, final integration and tests, release of the final stable version.

"The CLIC project is designed to answer an important need in the intensive calculation area by providing an extremely efficient, easy to use and affordable Clustering solution. This project should open the door to widespread adoption of high-performance systems in businesses and scientific laboratories throughout the world", said Jacques Le Marois, CEO of MandrakeSoft.

The CLIC project is a collaboration between INPG-INRIA (National Polytechnique Institute of Grenoble - ID-Mag), a research center with extensive expertise in clustering solutions; Bull, an IT infrastructure specialist with years of experience in high-performance computing systems who will build and validate the distribution on Intel processor-based computers (x86, IA-64) for its HPC offering; and MandrakeSoft, a specialist in building easy-to-use and easy-to-deploy Linux solutions.

CLIC Phase 1 features:

- Rapid deployment
- Auto-configuration
- MPICH, LAM & PVM support
- A large number of mathematical libraries
- Netjuggler (a parallelized virtual reality 3D engine)

CLIC was successfully demonstrated by AMD at the San Francisco LinuxWorld Expo in August 2002.

This first release has been tested on a 20-dual AMD processor cluster and has also been installed on 40-dual AMD processor cluster at the LPM2C physics research center (http://lpm2c.polycnrs-gre.fr/).

Françoise BERTHOUD from LPM2C says: "I had serious concerns over the management and administration of a cluster of 40 PCs due to the absence of currently available solutions. The CLIC installation was a great relief because in just a few hours all of the essential administration tools, and a large collection of development tools, were installed on every node of the cluster... and with amazing ease. And it works!"

CLIC is a Free Software project, so everyone is invited to download, test and report experiences and bugs. The product is currently available as a "ready to burn" ISO image at:
http://clic.mandriva.com/download.html

More information about CLIC is available at:
http://clic.mandriva.com/index-en.html

About MandrakeSoft

MandrakeSoft provides a trusted interface between users of information technology and Open Source developers. The company offers its enterprise, government and educational customers a complete range of GNU/Linux and OpenSource software and related services, plus user-friendly and highly competitive information technologies. Additionally, MandrakeSoft offers technologists committed to Open Source software and courseware a trusted channel to offer their services.

MandrakeSoft has technologists in over 20 countries, and is traded on Paris Euronext Marche Libre (Euroclear code: 4477.PA; Reuters code: MAKE.PA) and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF). "Born on the Internet" in late 1998, MandrakeSoft has established headquarters in the U.S.A., Montreal and France. Please visit the website: https://mandriva.com for more information.