Archive | November 8, 2004

Further affirming its leadership in high performance computing, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today received two prestigious HPCWire 2004 Editor’s Choice Awards. Sun was awarded first place for Greatest Price Performance in both the Visualization and Storage categories.

“Sun is honored to receive these awards from HPCwire,” said Bjorn Andersson, Director of Marketing for Grid Computing, Sun Microsystems. “Given the publication’s role as a respected authority in the high performance computing community, this recognition attests to the contribution Sun is making in the industry and the value we deliver to our customers.”

“The editors of HPCwire were very enthusiastic in their support of the 2nd Annual Editor’s Choice Awards, and we are honored to present the awards to Sun and the rest of the winning firms for their contributions to the top tier of the computing industry,” said Tom Tabor, Publisher, HPCwire.

Sun’s complete portfolio of high performance and technical computing (HPTC) solutions are well-established in the scientific community and are rapidly making headway in the commercial market for their ability to help companies accelerate time-to-results, design superior products or discover critical information while increasing productivity and reducing costs. Sun’s visualization technologies range from individual workstation-based graphics environments, to server-based collaborative capabilities for workgroup visualization as demonstrated by the Texas Advanced Computing Center’s visual grid for large group collaboration at UT Austin. Customers choosing AMD Opteron™ and Sparc(r) processor-based systems are finding both platforms ideally suited for technical computing needs and that Solaris provides the foundation for production level quality that is needed for core business functions. Sun’s innovative storage solutions help simplify IT environments so organizations of all sizes can increase efficiency and utilization, lower costs, improve reliability and compete more effectively. From the workgroup to the data center, Sun delivers resilient, modular and scalable solutions and services that enable customers to get the most out of their storage resources.

The awards will be formally presented during the Gala Evening at the Supercomputing 2004 Conference in Pittsburgh on November 8, 2004 (Booth #912).

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

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

SPARC is a trademark or registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc. 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.

Integrated Offering Based on Sun Fire Servers and Finch Sequencing Center Software Brings Enterprise-Level Data Management Capability to Small Labs

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) and Geospiza today launched a low-cost, integrated DNA sequencing solution for life sciences researchers worldwide. The offering includes Geospiza Finch Sequencing Center software for DNA sequencing data collection, management and analysis, bundled with high-performance Sun Fire servers running Solaris or Linux Operating Systems. The new offering is designed to meet the needs of cost-conscious biotechnology companies and academic core laboratory facilities, allowing them to maximize their research and capital investment dollars with a solution that can cost-effectively increase their productivity and scale smoothly as their sequencing data volumes continue to grow.

The Sun and Geospiza solution links the management of DNA sequencing orders and laboratory workflow with advanced bioinformatics and data visualization tools. This end-to-end capability allows customers to collect, distribute and analyze sequencing data so that they can consistently produce more reliable, meaningful scientific results that can be easily and securely shared with their colleagues worldwide. The offering provides customers an ideal replacement for outdated or custom-built infrastructures that are inadequate to handle rapidly growing sequencing volumes.

“With the increasing amounts of sequencing data produced in the industry, life sciences researchers require a robust, scalable solution that can manage the entire sequencing workflow, from the instrument to results,” said Loralyn Mears, Ph.D., market development manager for global life sciences at Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Sun and partner solutions such as the Geospiza DNA sequencing bundle help customers from the most demanding industries increase efficiency and productivity, while decreasing cost.”

Sun and Geospiza have already demonstrated superior performance of the integrated solution, which surpassed the one million chromatogram benchmark test, a critical threshold measurement of its ability to handle very large quantities of data in processing, managing and analyzing DNA.

“This may be the first time that labs can purchase a bundled solution at about one tenth of the cost that it would take to custom build one in-house,” said Todd M. Smith, Ph.D., chairman and CEO of Geospiza. “With the Sun and Geospiza offering, even the most price sensitive sequencing facilities can cost-effectively increase their productivity while preserving the ability to scale their operations to handle large projects such as ESTs and whole bacterial, plant and animal genomes.”

Pricing and Availability

The Sun and Geospiza offering is available immediately from Geospiza or Sun Microsystems’ authorized resellers. A very cost-effective solution running on the Sun Fire V20z server equipped with AMD Opteron processors starts at a U.S. list price of $13,995 for both hardware and software. Larger, scalable solutions running on the SPARC® processor-based Sun Fire V440 server are also available to meet customers’ growing needs, with a starting U.S. list price of $37,000. More information is available at the following url: www.geospiza.com/sun

The Sun and Geospiza DNA Sequencing bundle is the second in a series of integrated solutions from Sun Microsystems designed specifically for life sciences customers. Earlier this year, Sun released the Sun Fire Starter Cluster for Bioinformatics with a collection of commercial and public software from industry-leading partners. More information is available at the following url: http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2004-03/sunflash.20040329.1.html

About Geospiza Finch Sequencing Center

Geospiza Finch Sequencing Center leverages web-based forms and enterprise-level IT infrastructure for streamlining the management of sequencing data, scientific analysis and laboratory workflow. Resulting data are automatically checked by the Finch software for quality, then trimmed, vector masked and delivered into a designated secure database scientists can use to review results or share with colleagues and collaborators. The Geospiza family of Finch Applications, including Finch Assembly Manager, Finch BLAST Search Manager, FinchTV, Finch Genotyping Data Manager, Finch Oligo Order Manager and Finch Customer Invoice Manager, greatly extend the core data analysis and business capabilities of Finch Sequencing Center.

About Geospiza

Geospiza combines life sciences and IT expertise to deliver low-cost, high-productivity software systems to research teams and core labs worldwide. Geospiza’s integrated Finch system for DNA sequencing laboratory workflow, data management and analysis turns complex scientific processes into reliable, upgradeable and scalable every-day practices scientists and technicians can use to get their real work done. Geospiza was founded in 1997 and serves more than 10,000 researchers in both established and emerging biotechnology, academic, government and bio-pharmaceutical companies worldwide. More information is available at www.geospiza.com

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

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, The Network Is The Computer, Sun Fire and Solaris 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.

High Engergy Physics Leader Deploys Nearly 300 Sun Fire V20z Systems to Propel Leading Edge Research

Supercomputing 2004 Conference – November 8, 2004 – Demonstrating its leadership in high performance computing, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) has purchased 296 Sun Fire V20z servers for use in advanced research projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Projects include initial development of a Leadership-Class Computing Facility for Data-Intensive Science and the PEP-II/BaBar program making measurements at the frontiers of physics.

These AMD Opteron processor-based Sun Fire servers run the platinum standard for enterprise operating systems (OS) – Solaris, as well as Linux and Microsoft Windows through Windows Hardware Qualification List (WHQL) certification. Visit SLAC at the Supercomputing 2004 booth #2149, and Sun Microsystems at booth #1207.

“At SLAC we work with data-analysis clusters totaling thousands of nodes that access over a petabyte of data from hundreds of Sun data servers, so system management and system stability are important issues for us,” said Richard Mount, director of SLAC computing services. “Our selection of Sun x86 systems for our newest data-analysis cluster is a further step in our continuing efforts to achieve reliability and fully functional lights out management (LOM). This approach allows us to stop focusing on the datacenter floor and focus more on the services we deploy.”

Currently SLAC runs over 1000 SPARC(r) architecture-based systems and over 400TB of disk from Sun which are dedicated to SLAC physics and computer science research. The center plans to use a portion of the AMD Opteron processor-based systems to validate the use of a Large Memory System to resolve disk latency and bottlenecks, ultimately delivering a revolutionary increase in scientific productivity.

Sun is also partnering with SLAC to test and deploy new features of Solaris 10, highlighting the new TCP/IP architecture to scale from the low end to the high-end. The High Energy Physics (HEP) community is in the midst of running a new round of experiments to probe the fundamental nature of matter and space-time, to help us understand the origins of the universe. These experiments require working with volumes of complex data that need collaboration among scientists around the world. Sun systems with Solaris 10 will provide a portion of this massive infrastructure.

“Sun has always served high performance computing centers with our SPARC-based systems, and now that we have price/performance leading two and four way systems these traditional customers are bringing Sun into their tier 1 infrastructure,” said John Fowler, executive vice president at Sun. “We are thrilled to see a prominent high performance computing facility like SLAC choosing the Sun Fire V20z systems.”

“Sun fosters close working relationships with the top universities and colleges worldwide and we are recognized for our systems engineering and innovation,” said Kim Jones, vice president of global education and research. “SLAC’s choice of AMD Opteron processor-based systems from Sun will keep them at the leading edge of their research field.”

About the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is one of the world’s leading fundamental science research laboratories. SLAC designs, constructs and operates state-of-the-art particle accelerators and related experimental facilities used by high-energy physics studies probing the fundamental forces and structure of matter. The Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL), a premier national user facility at SLAC, enables research requiring ultra high-intensity x-ray beams for molecular and atomic scale studies in physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, and environmental science. The Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at SLAC is one of the most important centers for the study of the exciting new science of Particle Astrophysics. The BABAR collaboration investigating matter/anti-matter asymmetry is a current focus of high-energy physics, as is a vigorous R&D program focused on development of the International Linear Collider. SLAC, operated by Stanford University for the Department of Energy, Office of Science, is 40 miles south of San Francisco, California.

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

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.