Sun’s UltraSPARC® IV Processor-based Sun Fire Servers Set 14 World Records with Real World Applications

Outstanding Performance Results with SPECweb99_SSL, Linpack, and Leading Business Application Providers

SANTA CLARA, Calif.
February 8 , 2005

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced new industry-leading results with its Sun Fire UltraSPARC IV based servers running SPECweb99_SSL for secure web-based applications and Linpack for high performance computing. This follows similar records for the Sun Fire midrange platform with key ISVs such as Siebel Systems, further demonstrating the ability to deliver optimized application performance and breakthrough price/performance through Sun’s balanced system architecture. Since the launch of UltraSPARC IV based system, Sun Fire servers have set 14 world records across a range of industry standard and ISV-specific benchmarks.

Sun Fire V490 Servers Set World Record with SPECweb99_SSL

The SPECweb99_SSL is an industry-standard measure of secure web and application serving performance, relevant to all organizations looking to create secure network computing infrastructures such as secure online banking and ecommerce, provision of public health services, or supply chain management. Sun’s world record SPECweb99_SSL result was over 18 percent faster than the previous record from HP1 and supported 10,700 conforming connections on a cluster of 4 Sun Fire V490 servers, each powered by 4 UltraSPARC IV 1050MHz processors. This result was achieved using Sun Java System Web Server 6.1 SP2, a “real world” web server on the Solaris Operating System (OS), that demonstrated a secure web solution can sustain a large and scalable number of high throughput secure web server connections.

System Processor OS Web Server Connections Connections per Processor
Sun Fire V490 Solaris 9 Sun Java System Web Server 6.1 SP2 10700 668.75
HP Integrity rx8620 HP-UX 11i V2 Zeus 4.2r3 9060 566.25
HP Integrity rx7620 HP-UX 11i V2 Zeus 4.2r3 5388 673.5


Sun Fire E6900 Server Delivers on High Performance Computing

The Sun Fire E6900 server utilizing UltraSPARC IV processors demonstrated over 2x performance improvement over the previous generation Sun Fire 6800 servers on the Linpack benchmark1. The doubled performance boost is attributable to Chip- multithreaded processors combined with the new Solaris 10 Operating System optimized for multi-threaded workloads. The Linpack Benchmark is a high performance computing benchmark that measures a computer’s floating-point rate of execution. The results reflect the computer systems capability to solve a dense system of linear equations.

Leading Application Providers Deliver World Records on Sun

Previously announced results on Sun Fire midrange servers were achieved with Siebel Systems2 and other key ISVs for their enterprise applications on the UltraSPARC IV processors and Solaris OS. These results demonstrated that Sun builds systems optimized to run in real-world application performance versus benchmarks that are tuned for lab environments. The high availability, reliability, and record-breaking performance of Solaris running on Sun Fire systems makes it an ideal platform for the most demanding organizations running mission-critical enterprise, High Performance Technical Computing (HPTC), and compute-intensive applications.

For more information on Sun Fire systems and world record price/performance on real-world applications, visit http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v490/benchmarks.html and http://www.sun.com/servers/midrange/sunfire_e2900/benchmarks.html

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, Solaris, Sun Fire, Java 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.

1. SPEC and the benchmark name SPECweb99_SSL are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. HP’s 16-way rx8620 Itanium 1.5GHz server produced a SPECweb99 score of 9060 simultaneous user connections. Comparisons are based upon published results as of 2/1/05. For the latest SPEC benchmark results, visit http://www.spec.org/web99ssl/results/.

2. All results current as of January 10, 2005. Based on 24-way Sun Fire E6900 server (1.2 GHz) Linpack Rmax result of 98.26 as compared to the 24-way 1.2GHz Sun Fire 6800 Linpack Rmax result of 47.52. Source: http://performance.netlib.org/benchmark/performance.ps

3. Siebel and Siebel PSPP are trademarks of Siebel Systems, Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. The Siebel PSPP standard benchmark results are audited and certified by Siebel Systems. For benchmark results and criteria, visit www.siebel.com/crm/performance-benchmark.shtm.