New standard for workstation productivity runs visualization, simulation and rendering applications side by side without sacrificing performance

Renton, WA - August 9, 2011 – Parallels® today announced the launch of Parallels Workstation 6 Extreme (www.parallels.com/extreme), furthering a leadership position in the use of direct assignment technology for high end workstation virtualization. With Parallels Workstation Extreme designers, engineers and animators can achieve the consolidated workstation and feel the freedom of moving between multiple applications without the burden of reboots or shuffling between computers.

“Parallels Workstation 6 Extreme empowers people to be more productive, work faster and smarter while saving companies money by running and maintaining fewer machines. It uniquely enables the direct assignment of hardware resources to virtual environments so graphic rich applications run at near native speeds,” said Kim Johnston, Vice President of Marketing for Parallels. “The ability to directly assign each environment dedicated resources – including CPU, memory, graphics and networking – delivers unmatched performance that makes it possible to run multiple distinct environments side-by-side on a single workstation without compromising application performance.”

“Combining an HP Z800 Workstation with Parallels Workstation 6 Extreme provides customers with a powerful workstation virtualization solution - allowing customers to create and render, while performing intense analysis at the same time,” said Jeff Wood, director of worldwide marketing, Workstations, HP. “HP is committed to providing our customers with solutions that improve their bottom line - Parallels reduces compute times, resulting in higher productivity and ultimately ROI.”

Parker Hannifin Corporation Aerospace Group Manager of Enterprise Systems Bob Deragisch said, "Parallels Workstation Extreme enables our aerospace design engineers to deliver more robust designs in less time. They can create an initial design, analyze it on the workstation cluster, and then make changes interactively based on analysis results. They are able to quickly go through multiple cycles of design and analysis using higher fidelity models - with greater mesh density and more geometric details - yielding more accurate results. This added productivity ultimately gets them closer to the best design option based on performance, strength, endurance and cost."

Parallels Workstation 6 Extreme delivers a remarkable experience for the end user by utilizing intelligent performance features of the Intel 5500 and 5600 series chipsets, including support for the latest Intel Virtualization Technologies as well expanded support for Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O.

Intel VT-d (direct assignment) technology changes the way that I/O is directed to its target device, enabling virtual machines to interact with dedicated resources without the slowdown of hypervisor emulation layers. Direct assignment enables graphic intensive applications to interact with graphics cards and other resources giving the end user the perception of a single purpose machine no matter which application or O/S environments are being used.

Parallels Workstation 6 Extreme features include:

• Large capacity virtual machines can be provisioned with up to 12 virtual SMP, 64GB RAM, 2TB HDD and up to 16 virtual NICs
• Upgrade of Parallels Fastlane virtualization architecture to take advantage of Intel VT-X2 technologies (VPIDs, EPT & FlexPriority)
• KVM Paravirtualization for improved performance of paravirtualized Linux guest OSs
• 64bit virtual machine processes to improve the speed of guest environments with more than 1GB of virtual memory, decreases the time for snapshots to complete and improves the overall performance of guest environments
• Virtual CPUs support of the NX bit (No execute) enabling Data Execution Prevention in Windows
• Improved capabilities for sharing between virtual environments including shared files, shared clipboards, drag and drop capabilities and application sharing with the host OS
• Parallels Mobile for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, available in the App Store, enables remote access all virtual environments and their applications from anywhere
• Remote management enhancements and improvements to the command line interface enable administration of background virtual machines
• Extension of direct assignment to several new devices including USB/Audio controllers, 10GB NICs and ISI/SAS/SATA controllers

Parallels Workstation 6 Extreme is priced at 1,299.99 € per workstation license. Volume licensing is available for businesses and education institutions. Complete details are available online at www.parallels.com/extreme.

About Parallels
Parallels is a worldwide leader in hosting and cloud service enablement and desktop virtualization. Founded in 1999, Parallels is a fast-growing company with more than 800 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, please visit www.parallels.com, follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ParallelsCloud and Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ParallelsCloud