HP Announces Global Consortium to Enable New Linux Capabilities for Academic and Industrial Research

Gelato Federation to Facilitate Scalable, Open Source Solutions for Itanium-based Platforms

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 11, 2002

Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HWP) today announced the formation of the Gelato Federation, a worldwide consortium focused on enabling open source Linux-based Intel® Itanium™ Processor Family computing solutions for academic, government and industrial research.

The Gelato Federation, also known as Gelato, will work to develop scalable, commodity software to enable researchers to advance their studies in developing and technology-intensive areas, such as life sciences and physical sciences. Gelato invites participation from all interested organizations.

Co-founded by HP and seven of the world's leading research institutions, Gelato is launching an open source community initiative designed to foster the development and dissemination of focused computing solutions for researchers and associated IT staffs working on the Itanium-based Linux platform.

Gelato will provide the research community with software downloads, including new solutions developed by Gelato member institutions and by other contributors from the greater open source community. Gelato also will supply information services -- such as forums and technical data -- to make the Itanium-based Linux platform more accessible to researchers and their support staffs.

Gelato members include the BioInformatics Institute (Singapore), Groupe ESIEE (France), the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Tsinghua University (China), University of Illinois at Urbana -Champaign (UIUC), University of New South Wales (Australia) and the University of Waterloo (Canada).

Each institution will provide financial backing, IT infrastructure and human resources to oversee and support Gelato's mission and operations. Representatives of these organizations bring expertise in biotechnology, grid computing, compilers and languages, Linux kernel performance, and security, among other capabilities. Gelato will focus on these open source technologies as well as others.

Membership in Gelato is open to all academic, government and corporate entities. New members are eligible to have representatives on Gelato's governing strategy council. Gelato also plans to actively seek collaboration with other open source organizations and individual contributors.

The HP executive sponsor for Gelato is Rich DeMillo, HP vice president and chief technology officer. Along with DeMillo, representatives from HP's Linux operations and HP Labs will provide Gelato with technical resources and support.

"The Gelato Federation is representative of HP's effort to provide powerful Itanium-based Linux solutions for use by university and government researchers," said Martin Fink, general manager, HP Linux Systems Operation. "As a sponsor of Gelato, HP will work with federation members to bring superior scalable, open source computing solutions to the global research community."

NCSA and Groupe ESIEE will build and manage the Gelato Web Portal, which is expected to be operational in May. The portal will serve as a central meeting point for researchers who want to develop, execute and share their research in an open source, commodity computing environment. In addition to its portal role, NCSA will join with UIUC to host the Gelato Federation lead, the primary individual who will facilitate operations and coordinate Gelato's activities.

Technical solutions will be optimized for the 64-bit Itanium architecture and for performance scalability, from single node processors to Linux clusters to grid computing.

"The Linux Itanium-based platform has enormous potential to help scientists achieve important breakthroughs that will improve the quality of our lives in the new century," said Dan Reed, director, NCSA. "Gelato will give scientists the support base they need to make the Linux Itanium-based platform more robust and even more widely used. We are building a community of users and a virtual space where they can come together to share open source code, develop computing solutions, and address real-world problems."

The Gelato Federation endorses the major tenets of the open source movement, including a primary emphasis on the user; a commitment to developing high quality, 100 percent open source software; and a dedication to a non-bureaucratic, egalitarian and collaborative working environment.

More information on Gelato and how to join can be found on its Web site at http://www.gelato.org/.

About HP

Hewlett-Packard Company -- a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services -- is focused on making technology and its benefits accessible to all. HP had total revenue of $45.2 billion in its 2001 fiscal year. Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com/.

Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

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