Intel today announced an upgrade of its software tools suite for Mac OS X Leopard, the sixth major version of Apple's operating system.

The latest 10.1 version of the Intel C++ Compiler and Intel Fortran Compiler, as well as the Intel Threading Building Blocks, Intel Math Kernel Libraries and Intel Performance Primitives, have been optimized for Apple's Leopard and Xcode 3.0 development environment launched last month.

The combination of Intel's compilers, Leopard and Xcode 3.0 will allow Mac developers to take advantage of Intel multicore processors. Intel's compilers contain auto-parallelizing capabilities, libraries and Threading Building Blocks for Mac OS X, and Leopard is optimized for multicore environments with new developer APIs and tools for developing multithreaded applications.

Several Mac developers, including Apple's own Leopard development team, Adobe and Autodesk, have used Intel's compilers since the Mac OS X tools suite was introduced in January 2006.

Since the introduction of the Intel processor-based Macs in 2006, Intel has offered the Intel C++ Compiler, Intel Fortran Compiler, Intel Math Kernel Library and Intel Integrated Performance Primitives for Mac OS X. In 2007 the company added the Intel Threading Building Blocks for Mac OS X. To learn more about Intel's line of products of Mac OS X, click here: www.intel.com/software/products.