Archive | June, 2003

High-End System First to Break 200,000; Results Spotlight Server’s High Performance and Technical Computing Capabilities

Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced its flagship high-end server, the Sun Fire 15K, has delivered the industry’s best peak performance results on the SPEC OMPL2001benchmark. Outclassing both HP and SGI(1), the 72-processor Sun Fire 15K server, configured with 1.2 Ghz UltraSPARC(r) III processors and the Solaris Operating System, is the first server to break the 200,000 mark with a score of 213,466, demonstrating the system’s ability to efficiently scale and run large parallel applications in high-performance and technical computing (HPTC) environments.

The 72-processor Sun Fire 15K server delivered nearly 8 percent better peak performance than its closest competitor, a 128-processor system from SGI; and 30 percent better peak performance than HP’s 64-processor server. These results underscore the power of Sun’s crossbar-based SMP Sun Fire architecture which allows memory-intensive HPTC applications to achieve industry-leading scalability and faster time-to-solution.

Sun’s broad product line has a long history of multiple CPU support, large page features and memory placement optimization which enabled the Solaris OS to handle the large datasets used by SPEC OMPL2001 and allowed the applications to take advantage of the best possible placement of data in memory.

The SPEC OMPL2001 benchmark measures the performance of a system’s processors, memory architecture, operating system and compilers on compute-intensive parallel processing applications based on the OpenMP standard. Components of the SPEC OMPL2001 test cover a diverse set of important applications including, fluid dynamics, computational chemistry, crash simulations, structural analysis, and high-energy physics. OpenMP allows a user to write directives to specify parallelism in an application. Sun has a long history of providing world-record peformance on both technical and commerical applications on general purpose systems that demonstrate near-linear scalability on large shared memory systems.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — 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 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

(1) SPEC** and the benchmark name SPEComp** are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Competitive benchmark results stated above compared to SGI’s Origin 3900 and HP’s Superdome reflect results published on www.spec.org as of Nov. 10, 2002, and June 17, 2002, respectively. The comparison presented above is based on the peak metric for all systems for which there are submitted results. For the latest SPEC OMP benchmark results, visit http://www.spec.org/omp/results.

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 United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Reduces Prices on Sun Fire V880 and V480 Systems by Up to 25 Percent; Enhanced Sun Fire V880 System Delivers 17-Percent Increase in Processor Speed and Sets Price-Performance World Record

Proving that a best-selling server can get even better, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today offers a price reduction of up to 25 percent and delivers a 17-percent increase in processor speed on its industry-leading Sun Fire V880 systems. Sun is also reducing prices on its fastest-growing four-way Sun Fire V480 systems by up to 20 percent.

Delivering on its price-performance proposition, the Sun Fire V880 server features the 1.05 GHz UltraSPARC III Cu processor as well as the scalable and secure Solaris Operating Environment(OE). In addition, both systems represent an ideal systems platform on which to develop and deliver services on demand using Sun’s award-winning portfolio of software products integrated into Sun ONE (Sun Open Net Environment) software platform. These moves further substantiate Sun’s commitment to delivering low-cost computing systems and true price-performance value to customers.

According to IDC’s worldwide server report for the first quarter of 2003, Sun shipped more eight-processor servers, as well as gained more unit market share and revenue market share quarter-over-quarter, comparing Q103 to Q402, than Dell, HP or IBM (1). This level of demand for the Sun Fire V880 server allows Sun to pass volume-production savings through to its customers, including Archipelago, a company that is using Sun Fire V880 and V480 systems for powering its next-generation all-electronic stock exchange.

“Over the last year, Sun has introduced a variety of products that have significantly raised the bar on price-performance. The Sun Fire V880 server featuring the 1.05GHz UltraSPARC III Cu processor and an up-to-25 percent reduction in price is no exception,” said Warren Mootrey, director, Volume Systems Products at Sun Microsystems, Inc. “The Sun Fire V880’s success combined with the phenomenal acceptance of our Sun Fire V480 server has helped us grow significant revenue market share in the 4-8 way category. With these reductions in price and the increase in performance, we expect to penetrate the market even more by providing enterprise-class systems at low-cost computing prices.”

Sun Fire V880 System Conquers Benchmark Tests

Demonstrating the real-world value that the Sun Fire V880 server can bring to customers’ application price/performance, the enhanced Sun Fire V880 server is delivering record-setting benchmark results. Powered by eight UltraSPARC III 1.05GHz processors and running Sybase IQ 12.5 database on the Solaris 9 Operating Environment, the Sun Fire V880 server breaks the price-performance world record on the TCP-H @1000 GB benchmark, topping the HP 9000 SuperDome’s previous record by nearly 50 percent.

The benchmark results prove that the Sun Fire V880 system and Sybase IQ combination provides customers with the lowest-cost one-terabyte data warehouse solution on the market. Delivering a total three-year cost of ownership less than $233,000, the Sun Fire V880 system’s price-performance value proposition beats competitive offerings, which can’t be found for less than $5.2 million for a total three-year cost of ownership, by a massive margin.

Customers Prove the Sun Fire V880 and V480 Systems Are Up to the Task

The Blueprint Initiative at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada utilizes six Sun Fire V880 systems and two Sun Fire V480 systems in a redundant, highly available configuration to power its cutting-edge Biomolecular Interaction Network and SeqHound databases.

“At Blueprint, we require high-volume, reliable and powerful systems at a very competitive price,” said Eric Andrade, chief strategy, tactics and external relations officer, for the Blueprint Initiative. “The Sun Fire V880 and V480 systems are playing a critical role in helping bring our database to life. They provide the crucial processing power that a project of this magnitude requires and offer impressive flexibility and low carrying costs while accommodating Blueprint’s essential research needs.”

With its unique ability to consolidate multiple applications on a single server at an aggressive price point, customers in nearly every major vertical market, from education and telecom to financial services and government, have chosen the Sun Fire V880 server for a variety of database, application and file server needs. More than 250 universities throughout North America have successfully put Sun Fire V880 and V480 systems to the test as key components of their IT infrastructure, including Stanford, Emory, John Hopkins, Brigham Young and Cal Poly Pomona Universities.

Cost Savings and Availability

The Sun Fire V880 system starts at $32,995 (USD) with 2 CPUs and 4GB of memory. The Sun Fire V480 system starts at $19,995 (USD) with 2 CPUs and 4GB of memory. Both systems allow for growth to meet demanding business requirements without requiring changes to the operating system and are complementary to the Sun StorEdge 3510 Fibre Channel and 3310 SCSI arrays.

Sun Services helps customers continue to control costs when deploying the Sun Fire V880 and V480 servers by migrating and consolidating legacy applications. Both servers are also now available through Sun iForce partners. In addition, the Sun Fire V880 and V480 servers can be pre-configured and integrated onsite at Sun prior to shipping through the Sun Customer Ready Systems (CRS) program.

The TPC-H Benchmark TPC-H is a data warehousing-oriented, non-industry-specific benchmark that consists of a large number of complex queries typical of decision support applications. It also includes some insert and delete activity that is intended to simulate loading and purging data from a warehouse. TPC-H measures the combined performance of a particular database manager on a specific computer system.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — 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 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

(1)IDC Quarterly Server Tracker, Q1CY2003, published May 30, 2003.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Sun Fire, iForce, Sun ONE, Solaris, Sun StorEdge 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 United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.