Archive | May, 2002

Sun’s Leading Marketshare Results for 1Q02 Demonstrate Rapid Customer Adoption of UNIX based Sun Fire[tm] Server Line

According to the 1Q02 Servers Quarterly statistics US database by Gartner Dataquest, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) shipped more UNIX® systems than all of its competitors combined, with growth rates of almost 17% year-on-year and 5% sequentially. Furthermore according to the report, with $925M in revenue, Sun outpaced its two nearest competitors by more than a factor of two.

Overall, Gartner Dataquest reports that Sun’s Solaris[tm] Operating Environment and UltraSPARC® based systems experienced the highest level of revenue growth year-on-year of the top five IT vendors while most competing systems saw a decline. In the UNIX market, with 64% marketshare in shipments and 54% revenue share, Sun is clearly number one. Compared to the same quarter last year, Sun grew its marketshare in UNIX shipments by 6.8% while its two closest competitors lost share. Sun also led the pack in year-over-year UNIX revenue marketshare, where it grew by 3.3%.

These Gartner Dataquest results mark the rapid adoption of the Sun Fire product line. “The UltraSPARC III shipment volumes speak for themselves,” said Shahin Khan, Chief Competitive Officer, Sun Microsystems. “Our industry leading intellectual property portfolio and integrated supply chain enable us to quickly respond to the upturn in the market and translate that into increased business efficiency. Sun believes it is leading the charge in the commoditization of 64-bit computing.”

In the entry server space, Sun challenged the Wintel market as the Sun Fire V880 systems showed sequential increases of nearly 200% in both shipments and revenue, according to Gartner Dataquest’s report. Likewise, Sun is clearly on target with the Sun Fire 280R with 58% and 36% sequential increases in shipments and revenue, respectively. In the high-end, Sun feels the impressive sequential revenue (62%) and shipment (100%) growth for the Sun Fire 15K is evidence of customer enthusiasm.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer[tm]” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Sun Blade, Solaris, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. SPARC(R) and UltraSPARC(R) are registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. UltraSPARC(R) is licensed exclusively to Sun Microsystems, Inc. Products bearing the SPARC trademarks are based on an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd.

Sun’s Performance Is Nearly Double That of IBM’s Best Results in SPECjbb2000 Benchmark

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today submitted world-record results on the SPECjbb[tm] 2000 benchmark (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation Java Business Benchmark 2000). Testing confirmed that the Sun Fire™ 15K server, configured with 104 UltraSPARC® III Cu 1050 MHz processors, delivers 602,270 JBB operations per second (op/s) on the SPECjbb2000, crushing IBM’s best result of 339,484 op/s, set on the p690 “Regatta” server.

Sun also submitted results today for a Sun Fire 15K server configured with 72 UltraSPARC III Cu 1050 MHz processors. The results achieved on that system — 433,166 JBB op/s — when compared to the new world-record results, reveal near-linear scalability of the Sun architecture up to 104 CPUs. These unprecedented results clearly demonstrate that the Sun Fire 15K offers enterprises and institutions solid investment protection as their business needs grow.

The SPECjbb2000 benchmark evaluates server-side Java performance. Because it models a three-tier system, the most common type of server-side Java application, and uses typical business-critical workloads, including order-entry, inquiry and payment processing, the SPECjbb2000 benchmark aims to model the performance of real-world applications on today’s systems.

IO and Memory Benchmarks

In addition to its strong processor performance, the Sun Fire 15K offers balanced system design as evidenced by new results submitted for the STREAM(copy) benchmark and IO performance tests. Fast CPUs on the Sun Fire 15K work in combination with fast memory and IO bandwidth to deliver maximum performance for nearly any data center application. On the STREAM(copy) benchmark, which measures processor to memory bandwidth, the Sun Fire 15K delivered 54.6 GB per second (GB/s) handily beating the IBM p690 which came in at only 28.6 GB/s. In IO performance tests, the Sun Fire 15K delivered a sustained 12.3 GB/s IO bandwidth, compared to IBM p690’s peak of only 4.8 GB/s. Further, for the OLTP-type IO, the Sun Fire 15K demonstrated an outstanding 1.1 Million IOs per second (IOs) putting it in an altogether different league. Even IBM’s largest z900 mainframe, reports only 384,000 IOs.* Current Streams benchmark results are available at: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/top10/Bandwidth.html as of May 8, 2002.

Taken together, these results clearly illustrate that the upcoming introduction of the 1050 MHz UltraSPARC III Cu processor will propel an already high performing system to never-before-seen levels of functionality in the data center and in turn help Sun build on its four-fold lead in Mainframe Equivalent MIPS shipments over IBM, according to Sun’s data.

About the Sun Fire 15K server

With rock-solid availability and hot-swappable components that are common to the entire Sun Fire family, the Sun Fire 15K helps redefine total cost of ownership across IT organizations. The Sun Fire 15K system features Sun’s most advanced technology, including fifth-generation Dynamic System Domains and Uniboard Design. Running the robust Solaris™ 8 Operating Environment, the Sun Fire 15K reliably supports thousands of mission-critical applications and has the flexibility to support multiple configurations as business needs change.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer[tm]” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Sun Fire, Solaris, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the US and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

SPECjbb is a trademark of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC). Competitive numbers shown reflect results published on “www.spec.org as of May 10, 2002. The comparison presented is based on leading results. For the latest SPECjbb2000 results visit http://www.spec.org/osg/jbb2000.

*IBM mainframe IO results based on the following report: http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/library/whitepapers/gm130030.html.