Momentum Continues with New Services, More Than 400 New ISVs and Expanded Platform Support
During its quarterly Network Computing ’05(NC05Q1) launch today, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) announced that the highly anticipated Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System (OS) is available for customers to download and deploy, free of charge from Sun’s Web site (http://sun.com). Customers will benefit from increased performance as demonstrated through world-record benchmarks, affordable new service and support models and 400 new ISVs supporting Solaris 10. Solaris 10 is a vendor-neutral operating system that is available on more than 340 different hardware platforms from vendors as diverse as Dell, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, IBM and HP.
“There are already 750,000 installations of Solaris 10 through the Software Express for Solaris program. This strong interest underscores the fact that Solaris 10 is delivering tremendous value to customers, partners and developers,” said John Loiacono, executive vice president, Software at Sun. “Coming on the heels of Sun’s OpenSolaris announcement last week, the availability of Solaris 10 is the latest in a series of milestones for Sun.” Extreme Performance With Solaris 10
Sun also announced world record 64-bit results for the Java(TM) platform on Sun’s one-, two- and four-way servers powered by AMD Opteron(TM) processors for the SPEC JBB2000 benchmark (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation Java(TM) Business Benchmark). This achievement highlights Sun’s unmatched performance and success in delivering high performance systems for 64-bit computing. The results were achieved on Sun Fire(TM) V20z and Sun Fire V40z servers using the latest AMD64 implementation of the standard Java Platform (Java 2 Platform (J2SE(TM) 5.0), that was compiled with the new Sun(TM) Studio 10 software. Additionally, the two-way result on the Sun Fire V20z server signifies the advantage of running Java technology-based applications on the industry’s highest performance operating system, Solaris 10, by surpassing previous high marks achieved on the same server with a Linux OS. The SPEC JBB2000 benchmark measures the implementation of Java Virtual Machine (JVM) as well as the performance of the underlying operating system, scalability of processors and memory on Shared Memory Processors (SMPs) platforms. New Services and Support Now Available
The comprehensive set of new services includes flexible subscription-based offerings, migration and education services. Customers and partners can now download Solaris 10 OS free of charge for commercial use. Sun also offers service and support for the Solaris OS that is up to 40 percent less expensive than the leading Linux distribution. Similar to phone calling plans, the subscription-based Solaris Service Plans provide customers and partners with choice and flexibility to receive the level of support they need. Customers can choose Basic, Standard or Premium Solaris Service Plans, each with scalable and predictable pricing, based on the number of processor sockets. To date, more than 7,200 people have registered for the no-cost Web-based Solaris 10 education preview class, and more than 1,400 people have signed up for Early Advantage classroom courses. More information about the Solaris 10 Services portfolio is available at http://sun.com/service/solaris10.
Unprecedented Partner Support
Fueling demand for Sun’s enterprise-class UNIX(R) OS is unprecedented support from Sun’s partner community. Independent hardware vendors, software vendors (ISVs) and OEMs are seeing increased demand and opportunity for Solaris 10. Since November 2004, more than 400 new ISVs, including the leading ISVs from EMEA and APAC, have committed to Solaris 10 through the “Ten Moves Ahead” Partner Initiative which provides technical, marketing and sales benefits to partners developing applications on Solaris 10. Additionally, to help customers and ISVs protect their investment in Solaris, Sun is the only vendor to offer an application guarantee that applies to binaries and source code. With more than 12,000 existing commercial applications today, Solaris has one of the most vibrant ecosystems in the industry. More than 700 business software partners have committed to delivering Solaris 10 applications by the end of this year.
“Strong customer demand has accelerated our support for Solaris 10,” said Sean Duclaux, director, Product Management and Infrastructure Management at BMC Software, Inc. “On the heels of Sun’s release of Solaris 10 to the public, we intend to extend PATROL’s already rich Solaris support to include Solaris 10.”
Sun Studio 10 Now Available for Download
Solaris developers can also take full advantage of the Sun Studio 10 development environment, now available for download from the Sun Web site. Sun Studio 10 makes it simple to get outstanding performance when developing C, C++ and FORTRAN applications for Solaris 10. The product provides a comprehensive environment for developing scalable 32- and 64-bit applications on Sun’s newest UltraSPARC(R), Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processor-based systems. Sun Studio 10 software is fully compatible with previous releases, making it easy for users to upgrade.
To fully demonstrate the capability of Sun Studio 10 and Solaris 10 OS, Sun has submitted the new world record SPECompM2001 result in the two-way category. The SPEC OMPM2001 benchmark is a test of the performance of 11 High Performance Computing (HPC) applications. All C and FORTRAN applications in this suite use the OpenMP programming model and were compiled using the latest Sun Studio 10 development environment, which contributed to as much as a 20 percent boost in performance, when compared with previous Linux-based results published by Sun.
The new score also demonstrated that the Sun Fire V20z server eclipsed the recent IBM eServer OpenPower(TM) 710 server result by 14 percent. Not only did the Sun Fire V20z server outperform the Power5-based server running Linux, it also outperformed the server with half the number of parallel threads.
Sun’s NC05Q1 Web event is available on the World Wide Web at sun.com/nc/05q1. More information on today’s announcements, including full press releases and product details, can be viewed at Sun’s online press kit(http://sun.com/aboutsun/media/presskits/networkcomputing05q1/).
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 Microsystems, Inc. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, Solaris, OpenSolaris, Sun Fire, Java, J2SE 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. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd.
SPEC and the benchmark names SPEComp and SPECjbb are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Competitive benchmark results reflect data published as of 02/01/05. For the latest benchmark results, visit http://www.spec.org/. The 2-way systems have 2 cores. The Sun Fire V20z server (2xAMD Opteron Model 250, Solaris 10): SPECompM2001 – 6033 (2 cores, 2 chips, 2 threads). The Sun Fire V40z server (2xAMD Opteron Model 850, SuSe Linux): SPECompM2001 – 5000 (2 cores, 2 chips, 2 threads). The IBM eServer OpenPower(tm) 710 (1.65 GHz POWER5, Linux): SPECompM2001 – 5282, 2 cores, 1 chip, 4 threads. Result is at: http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/050124/079508.html The Sun Fire V20z server (1xAMD(tm) Opteron Model 250, Solaris 10): 39950 JBB operations per second (JBBops/s). The Sun Fire V20z server (2xAMD Opteron Model 250, Solaris 10): 61314 JBBops/s. The Sun Fire V40z server (4xAMD Opteron Model 850, Solaris 10): 107465 JBBops/s.