Author Archive | SPARC Editor

Enterprise-Class Platform Targets Microsoft Server Market with Robust Security and Lower Acquisition Cost by Up to 15x

Sun Microsystems, Inc. today delivered on its redoubled commitment to the UNIX® platform, extending the full benefits of the Solaris™ Operating System (OS), the number one UNIX platform, to x86-based servers with the Solaris 9 x86 Platform Edition. Seeing a growing market opportunity, Sun is expanding its products and services into the x86 server market. While industry competitors abandon UNIX, Sun’s strategy guarantees customer continuity and global support for UNIX on its entire line of both SPARC[tm] and x86 systems, and on third party x86 systems.

With the release of the Solaris 9 x86 Platform Edition, Sun is giving customers a proven, highly secure enterprise-class OS for entry-level servers. By offering management and hardening features previously unavailable on x86 servers, the Solaris 9 OS provides customers with a far more secure and less expensive alternative to Microsoft’s competing Windows servers. The Solaris 9 OS also offers newly integrated Sun™ ONE products, along with secure networking and content delivery functionality. Sun expects to deliver an integrated Sun ONE software portfolio on the Solaris x86 Platform Edition within the calendar year.

Non-commercial usage is available at no charge, while commercial pricing starts at US $99; attractive OEM pricing is also available. Source code for Solaris will now be available.

“Enterprise requirements are simple — security, scalability, global support and price/performance,” said Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice president, software, Sun Microsystems. “As the only leading vendor to increase its investment in UNIX, Sun with its Solaris OS now combines legendary security, unparalleled price/performance, product stability, and a growing commitment to both x86 and SPARC systems. With the evolving functionality of the Java platform and Sun ONE portfolio, Sun now stands alone in redoubling its commitment to UNIX and in lowering costs and increasing security in a tight spending environment.”

Wide Support for the Solaris x86 Platform Edition To date, the Solaris x86 Platform Edition has over 1.1 million registered licenses and features over one thousand certified applications in many different markets.

“Verizon’s use of the Solaris x86 Platform Edition will help us continue to increase reliability and security while reducing overall costs,” said Shadman Zafar, senior vice president-IT Architecture & eServices, Verizon Communications.

“AMD shares Sun’s commitment to the x86 market, and to providing customers compatible, stable continuity for their software and infrastructure,” said Marty Seyer, vice president of server business segment, Computation Products Group, AMD. “Enterprise customers can benefit from the proven performance and dependability of AMD Athlon[tm] MP processors together with the scalability and manageability of Solaris 9 OS.”

“We welcome Sun’s commitment to entry-level systems,” said Dr. Raj Nathan, senior vice president and general manager, Sybase Enterprise Solutions Division. “Our customers benefit from the lower cost of acquisition and operation of Sybase software — Sun’s extension of the Solaris OS to the low-end market creates an even more compelling end-to-end value proposition for our customers.”

“BEA believes that customers will respond favorably to Solaris x86, and be able to benefit from the experience BEA and Sun have in optimizing and tuning our software on Solaris,” said John Gray, vice president of Global Alliances, BEA Systems. “BEA looks forward to supporting this extension to the Solaris platform.”

“The Quantiva Analysis System (QAS) tests Web application performance using advanced statistical analysis and diagnostic algorithms, so it is absolutely critical for us to have a robust operating system capable of supporting massive numerical computing tasks across scores of distributed systems,” said Ron Hiller, founder and CTO of Quantiva, Inc. “QAS runs on Solaris x86 machines with uptimes of over 600 consecutive days, distributed across the Internet. As an added plus, we will be able to easily migrate to SPARC as our application suite broadens.”

“We are pleased Sun has listened to the x86 community,” said Alan DuBoff, president, Software Orchestration, Inc. “By offering the Solaris 9 OS on x86 hardware, customers can once again take advantage of the rock solid operating system on a low cost platform. Solaris has long been a leader in the enterprise sector and the addition of the Sun ONE software stack makes the Solaris x86 Platform Edition a very attractive and cost effective solution.”

Solaris x86 Platform Edition — Outperforming Microsoft with Integrated Value

With the release of the Solaris 9 x86 Platform Edition, Sun raises the bar for the entry-level server marketplace by adding hundreds of enterprise-class features to the Solaris OS, Sun’s proven, fully maintained and supported platform. New integrated server technologies, including the SunScreen[tm] 3.2 software firewall, the Sun ONE Directory Server, IPQoS services for bandwidth management and the Solaris 9 Resource Manager add to an impressive list of Reliability, Availability, Serviceability (RAS) features delivered in earlier releases.

The Solaris 9 x86 Platform Edition lowers the total cost of acquisition by a factor of as much as 15 compared to a two-way web server configuration of the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server.

Unlike the Microsoft Windows 2000 server and the Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced server, the Solaris 9 x86 Platform Edition includes the following enterprise-class services at no additional cost:

• Directory Server – The Sun ONE Directory Server 5.1
• Enterprise-class firewall – SunScreen 3.2 software includes enterprise-class proxy and firewall features
• Enterprise Volume Manager – The Solaris Volume Manager scales to thousands of disk partitions and includes mirroring and striping of volumes for data integrity and performance
• Support for IPv6 – Solaris 9 OS includes production-quality implementation
• Secure Shell – Solaris 9 OS includes this standard protocol for heterogeneous secure remote access

In addition, the Solaris 9 x86 Platform Edition bundles the Solaris 9 Resource Manager, a value of $1190, at no additional cost, providing guaranteed service level for applications and improving CPU utilization through consolidation of applications.

Solaris x86 for Developers

Currently, over 600 partners provide more than 1,000 solutions for the Solaris x86 Platform Edition. ISVs like Computer Associates, Nuance, a leading provider of speech solutions, Symantec, and Solaris OS/SPARC Platform Edition developers can leverage existing investments in deploying on entry-level systems. ISV Solutions are listed at http://solutions.sun.com.

Sun also offers Linux compatibility at both source and binary levels. Sun assists developers working on Java[tm], Solaris and Sun ONE through a rich set of programs, including Developer Technical Support and the Developer Essentials software subscription program. Together with its ISV partners, Sun is delivering powerful business solutions for the global enterprise.

Pricing and Availability

• Sun is shipping x86 systems that include a Solaris OS license. For more information see http://www.sun.com/lx50.
• Licenses start at $99 for commercial deployment. The Solaris 9 software is available for download at http://wwws.sun.com/software/download. Sun is offering attractive license terms permitting re-distribution by OEMs.
• Sun provides support for the Solaris x86 Platform Edition. Full licensing and support information is available at http://www.sun.com/service/support/sw_only/solaris1.html
• The Free Solaris[sm] Binary License Program for non-commercial use and used by non-profit organizations is described at http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries.
• Source code can be licensed to customers.

About the Solaris Operating System

The Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) is the premiere OS for the enterprise. With over 300 new features, the Solaris 9 OS is the most scalable, available, manageable and secure services platform for the networked world. By focusing on industry standards, the Internet, innovation and integration, the Solaris 9 OS delivers a documented lower cost of operation. The Solaris OS is the leading UNIX platform operating system with Sun servers owning 54 percent worldwide UNIX market share in shipments and 34 percent worldwide UNIX revenue share, according to Gartner Dataquest’s 3Q02 Servers Quarterly Statistics.

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 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademark 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.

UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open company, Ltd.

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

Enhanced COD Capability Lowers Up-Front Costs on Sun Fire Midframe and High-end Servers; Delivers Instant Access to Additional System Capacity

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today introduced Capacity on Demand 2.0, a dramatically enhanced “pay-as-you-go” computing option that lowers system acquisition costs while increasing scalability and flexibility in the data center. Customers can now purchase Sun Fire[tm] Midframe and high-end systems configured to scale instantly, simply and in small increments – one processor at a time – when user demands increase. Unlike competitors who charge a premium for similar capabilities, Sun helps enable customers to take advantage of the flexibility provided by COD 2.0 at no extra cost.

Today’s introduction of COD 2.0 is coupled with the debut of the Sun Fire Link interconnect. Together, these offerings bolster Sun’s commitment to help customers manage complexity, maximize utilization of resources and scale their IT infrastructure efficiently as their data centers move toward virtualization.

With COD 2.0, Sun brings an enhanced version of its popular enterprise computing feature, formerly available on the Sun Enterprise[tm] 10000 server, to the UltraSPARC® III-powered Sun Fire 3800 through the Sun Fire 15K servers. COD 2.0 helps enable customers to install processor and memory resources on their Sun Fire systems at the time of purchase and only pay for those resources when they are used. Further, the self-monitoring capability of COD 2.0 virtually eliminates the need for remote system monitoring and usage reporting.

“With ever-tightening IT budgets, vendors need to remove as many barriers to entry as possible,” said Vernon Turner, group vice president, global enterprise server solutions of IDC. “By offering customers lower up-front costs and the ability to scale with ease, Sun is delivering one of the strongest and most compelling capacity on demand capabilities in the market.”

“Everyone needs to be prepared for growth. With COD 2.0, retail customers can handle the holiday rush, educational institutions are ready for back-to-school and banks can service an influx of new customers,” said Steve Campbell, vice president of marketing, Enterprise System Products for Sun Microsystems. “By lowering system acquisition costs and eliminating the need for usage reporting, Sun’s COD offering makes it easy to meet the fluctuating demands of the market.”

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 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

New Facility Helps Sun Chip Designers Perform Equivalent of 15 Years of Engineering Computation in a Day-Proving Ground for Grid and N1[tm] Technologies

Sun Microsystems, Inc. [NASDAQ: SUNW] accelerates development of new generations of the UltraSPARC® processor through today’s grand opening of a new processor design compute ranch at the company’s Burlington, Mass. campus. The new compute ranch joins a national network of facilities in Sunnyvale, Calif. and Austin, Texas that consist of over 7,500 UltraSPARC processor nodes operating at a sustained 98 percent utilization rate 24 hours a day. In addition to helping Sun bring new processors to market, the ranch infrastructure acts as a proving ground for advanced grid and virtualized “N1″[tm]-style computing technologies.

Fifteen Years of Computing In A Day

Sun uses the compute ranches for developing its award-winning UltraSPARC microprocessors. With the next generations of processors expected to integrate several hundred million transistors, just simulating the operations of new designs will require trillions of calculations over a typical two-to-five year design project life cycle. The efficiencies and time savings enabled through the ranches is one of the main reasons that Sun can maintain a fast pace of new product introductions at sustainable levels of R&D spending.

In a typical day, the ranches execute over 140,000 jobs submitted by the UltraSPARC processor engineering team, consuming over 134,000 hours of computing time-the equivalent of 15 years of single processor computing. The infrastructure consists of an all-Sun platform integrating Sun Servers, workstations, Sun[tm] Ray desktop systems and Sun networked storage supported by the Solaris[tm] Operating Environment.

Sophisticated resource management software keep the ranches running at maximum efficiency. Key functions performed by this software include job scheduling and system and infrastructure management (networking, clustering, load balancing, diagnostics, software license accounting). Since the first compute ranch went “live” 11 years ago, the compute ranch software platform has grown in sophistication and has acted as prototyping and testbed for grid computing and advanced, “N1”-style networked infrastructure virtualization and management technologies. The Ranch architecture of pooled computing resources can be used to many other compute-intensive applications, including mechanical engineering, architecture/civil engineering, biotechnology/ genomics, aerospace, oil and gas exploration, defense, and film/video production.

The Ranches and UltraSPARC Processor R&D

David Yen, executive vice president of Sun Microsystems’ Processor and Network Products Group comments: “This new compute ranch and its companion facilities in Austin and Sunnyvale help Sun speed time-to-market for new processor designs through high levels of engineering productivity at low cost of ownership and operation. The ranches are also a preview and testbed for the next waves of grid and virtualized, N1-style network computing technologies from Sun. Finally, the advantages of our compute ranches are just too good to keep to ourselves. We’re recommending ranch computing as a solution for a broad spectrum of technical computing customers.”

Affordable, Aggressive Processor R&D Program

The new compute facility illustrates Sun’s commitment to developing new generations of the UltraSPARC processor. Founded on a long-standing chip-making technology partnership with Texas Instruments, Sun drives an aggressive processor design R&D program at affordable cost to the company. This core-competence-focused business model enables Sun to “punch above its weight” in bringing innovative 64-bit network computing microprocessors to market that outpoint rivals from larger companies.

Other advantages Sun has in its processor design include the proven, durable SPARC instruction set, a company-wide focus on total solution (processor, system, software) collaborative engineering, outstanding third-party application developer support, and the UltraSPARC processor engineering team. The UltraSPARC design team is the second largest microprocessor engineering organization in the world, with design centers in Sunnyvale, Austin and Burlington.

The Burlington campus is Sun’s leading R&D base on the East Coast. In addition to members of the UltraSPARC development team, Burlington hosts Sun Microsystems Laboratories East and engineering work supporting the full range of the company’s workstation, server, storage and software product lines.

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 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, Sun Ray, N1, 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.

New 1+ GHz Systems Deliver Superior Floating Point Performance Over Competitive SGI and HP Systems

Sun Microsystems Inc. said it plans to use technology gained from a recent acquisition to develop specialized microprocessors that will have up to eight CPU cores on each chip and will be able to handle different forms of network traffic.

Sun is working on a set of eight-core SPARC processors that could crunch transaction data and also take on IT tasks such as churning through TCP/IP requests, said Graham Lovell, a product marketing director at the company, during a press briefing last week.

Lovell wouldn’t provide a date when users might see the new processors, but he said the devices are coming “sooner than you might think.” He indicated that the technology supporting multiple CPU cores, which Sun acquired in its July purchase of San Jose-based Afara WebSystems Inc., will initially appear in systems with up to four processors.

Vendors such as San Jose-based Alacritech Inc. have come out with network cards called TCP/IP offload engines, or TOEs, that are designed to speed up TCP/IP processing jobs for servers and storage systems. But according to Lovell, Sun’s approach would offload those jobs to a dedicated set of CPU cores on a processor instead of requiring a separate accelerator.

“It gives much more flexibility when it’s on a chip,” Lovell said, adding that Sun expects the technology to improve the performance of its lower-end systems that handle e-mail, file, print and multimedia data-serving applications.

Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc. in Nashua, N.H., said chips such as the ones Sun envisions could help solve problems facing server vendors that are seeing network bandwidth threatening to outpace processor performance. For example, 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks could place a huge burden on servers because of their potential to increase the volume of network traffic, Haff said.

“If Sun or somebody else can make a processor be radically more efficient in terms of handling TCP/IP processing without the need to do anything special from a high-level programming point of view, that is really very interesting,” he said.

The specialized chips potentially could also handle tasks such as processing Secure Sockets Layer requests and churning through large graphics files, Haff said. Dedicating these functions to a specific part of a processor would free the rest of the CPU cores on the chip to perform regular data processing work, he added.

IBM already offers servers powered by a dual-core Power 4 chip, and both Sun and Hewlett-Packard Co. expect to offer dual-core processors for their Unix servers sometime next year (see story). Putting two cores on a single piece of silicon can make servers almost twice as powerful. But efforts to develop eight-core processors for larger systems have been moving more slowly.

Enhanced Two-Way Entry Server Comes Bundled with Solaris[tm] Operating Environment and Sun[tm] ONE Software, Speeding Installation and Deployment for Customers

Answering customers’ growing needs for a more secure and powerful Web services platform at an affordable price, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) delivers the Sun Fire[tm] 280R server featuring the 1.015 GHz UltraSPARC® III Cu processor and the scalable and secure Solaris[tm] Operating Environment (OE). With the more powerful processor, the rack-optimized Sun Fire 280R server offers a performance increase of up to 17 percent over Sun Fire 280R servers with 900MHz UltraSPARC III processors. In addition, the Sun Fire 280R system comes bundled, at no extra cost, with the software required to run Web Services applications helping to enable customers to reduce implementation time and expense.

Making the Sun Fire 280R server an ideal platform for the delivery of Web services, the server will come standard with the new Sun[tm] ONE Application Server 7, Platform Edition and the Sun ONE Studio 4 development tool, Community Edition and Mobile Edition pre-installed early next quarter. Sun has also pre-installed the Solaris[tm] 8 OE with Apache Web Server software. Sun has also introduced a special bundle for secure Web services with the Sun Crypto Accelerator 1000 Secure Socket Layer encryption card.

In addition to the Solaris 8 OE that comes standard on the Sun Fire 280R server, the availability of the Solaris 9 OE for the system adds enhanced security options for customers seeking a secure Web services platform. New security features in Solaris 9 benefit customers by protecting data through encryption of sensitive sessions, the inclusion of an enterprise-strength firewall/VPN, improved access control through single sign-on improvements and the ability to block unauthorized users from access to the network. The Sun Fire 280R server is one of the recommended platforms for Sun ONE Network Identity solutions and iForce[sm] perimeter defense solutions.

“The Sun Fire 280R server provides all the software required right out of the box for customers to deploy secure Web services with confidence as well as the performance benefits from the latest UltraSPARC technology,” said Souheil Saliba, vice president of marketing, Volume Systems Products group of Sun Microsystems. “The Sun Fire 280R server has been one of the top sellers driving revenues for Sun in the volume space. From Q1CY02 to Q2CY02, Sun beat Dell, the new HP and IBM by growing faster than any other vendor in the dual-processor rack-optimized server market in both units and revenue”*

“We made the switch from Wintel servers to Sun and now all Desert Sky Software mission-critical applications and databases reside on Sun platforms,” said Luke Holton, president of Desert Sky Software. “Our Sun Fire 280R servers are used not only as development and database servers but we also trust these systems for mission-critical applications. No other server we have found exceeds the reliability of the Sun Fire 280R.”

“Reliability is one of the key pieces to running a successful production environment. Many of our servers have been running for 365 days without having to be rebooted. That’s incredible reliability,” said, Aaron Clark, Manager of Network Operations for Citadon. “The Sun Fire 280R servers were the right price point for us. But even more important than the economics is the superior processing speed we get from these servers.”

Sun Crushes Wintel Competition With Benchmarks to Prove It

A low-cost, high-value, entry-level solution, the enhanced Sun Fire 280R is an enterprise-class, 4U rack-optimized server that delivers superior performance. In a Webbench 4.1 benchmark measuring dynamic Web server performance tested by PC Magazine in May 2002, the Sun Fire 280R outperformed Wintel and Lintel 2-way 2U and 3U servers from the new HP and IBM by more than 450 percent, demonstrating strong performance for Web transactions. These superior Web-focused performance results combined with aggressive pricing helps Sun customers ultimately take cost savings to their bottom line.

Pricing and Availability

The Sun Fire 280R server features up to two high performance Ultra SPARC III Cu processors, Sun’s Fireplane Interconnect that runs at a maximum of 4.8GB/s, redundant, front-accessible power supplies and Fibre Channel disk drives, and Remote System Control (RSC). The server with two 1.015 GHz processors, 2 GB of memory, two 36 GB 10Krpm FC-AL drives, redundant power supplies, DVD-ROM and Remote System Control is available immediately, starting at $19,995 list price U.S. directly from Sun and authorized Sun Resellers. For more information, go to http//www.sun.com/servers/entry/280R/.

SunNetwork[sm] 2002 Conference Registration Now Open

The SunNetwork[sm] Conference and Pavilion is the only conference dedicated to showcasing end-to-end solutions from Sun and its partners that have revolutionized the Internet, networking and computing industries. The SunNetwork[sm] Conference will take place September 18-20, 2002 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Register now at http://sun.com/sunnetwork and be among the first to see a new generation of technologies that make the Net work.

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

*Source: IDC’s worldwide quarterly server tracker 2Q02 for all OS.

Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, Solaris, Sun Fire, iForce, SunNetwork and the Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and in 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.

The World’s Top 64-Bit UNIX Workstation Vendor Boosts Performance by up to 63 Percent in Computing and 76 Percent in Graphics in New Entry-Level System

Reinforcing its worldwide leadership in the 64-bit workstation market, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today introduced the new price leader in 64-bit UNIX desktops, the Sun Blade[tm] 150 workstation. Featuring Sun’s latest 64-bit UltraSPARC(R) IIi processor, the Sun Blade 150 workstation offers up to 76 percent performance gains over Sun’s previous price -leading workstations, and is less than half the price of comparable entry-level systems from HP.

“Where’s the value in a PC that you toss out every year or two?” asked Neil Knox, Executive Vice President, Volume Systems Products, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Sun has sold more than one million Sun Ultra 5 and Ultra 10 workstations combined, that have provided our customers with years and years of reliable performance. When those customers need more compute horsepower or graphics capabilities, the Sun Blade 150 workstation is the perfect upgrade, providing full binary compatibility for a seamless transition, and offering a very low price point for today’s tight budgets.”

The Sun Blade 150 workstation’s improved computing performance and memory addressability make it an ideal upgrade for software developers currently using entry-level Sun Ultra 5 or Sun Blade 100 workstations. The new workstation’s vastly improved 3D graphics performance also makes it an excellent upgrade for Sun Ultra 10 workstation users.

The Sun Blade 150 workstation delivers twice the L2 on-chip cache memory, up to twice the 3D graphics performance, and double the storage capacity of the Sun Blade 100 workstation. Aimed at technical markets that require mission-critical stability and scalability, the Sun Blade 150 workstation’s 64-bit UltraSPARC processor and 64-bit Solaris[tm] Operating Environment deliver a powerful platform for technical computing customers, from electronic design automation (EDA) and mechanical computer-aided engineering/design (MCAE/MCAD), to scientific research, GIS and defense/government organizations.

When configured with the new Sun[tm] XVR-500 graphics accelerator, the Sun Blade 150 workstation delivers advanced workstation graphics capabilities at an affordable price, including: 16 MB of dedicated memory for texture mapping operations; 32 MB of dedicated frame buffer memory; 32-bit Z-buffer support, which provides over 250 times greater precision for three dimensional graphics compared to 24-bit architectures; and high resolution 3D display support. The XVR-500 graphics accelerator, announced in May 2002, is based on 3Dlabs’ Wildcat II architecture and delivers high-performance 3D graphics functionality and image quality, important factors for customers using MCAD, MCAE or GIS visualization applications. The advanced graphics technology delivers up to twice the performance of the Sun Expert3D-Lite graphics card.

Maximum Value in 64-Bit Computing

Unlike some PCs that are limited by 32-bit architectures, the Sun Blade 150 workstation’s UltraSPARC/Solaris platform can address up to 2 GB of system memory and run both 32- and 64-bit applications without compromising performance. Additionally, the Sun Blade 150 workstation is binary compatible with Sun’s entire range of workstations and servers. And with the optional Sun PCi II Pro coprocessor board, Sun Blade 150 workstation customers can run multiple operating systems simultaneously, including most Windows platforms, providing a faster, more productive environment for cross platform software development while reducing system overhead.

Sun Blade 150 Workstation Cranks up Performance

The Sun Blade 150 workstation also delivers significant performance increases on the SPEC CPU2000 benchmarks. The Sun Blade 150 workstation clocked 41 percent better performance on SPECint2000 versus the Sun Blade 100 workstation and a 52 percent performance boost on SPECfp2000. On the technical computing application ABAQUS, the Sun Blade 150 workstation is up to 63 percent faster than the Sun Blade 100 workstation.

Additionally, the Sun Blade 150 workstation delivers 17% better price/performance than HP’s B2600 entry-level workstation on the SPECint benchmark and 19% better price/performance on SPECfp.

Pricing and Availability

The Sun Blade 150 workstation base configuration includes the 550 MHz UltraSPARC IIi processor, Solaris[tm] 8 Operating Environment, 512 KB on-chip L2 cache, 128 MB SDRAM, PGX64 onboard 2D graphics, and 40 GB internal disk. It is available today starting at $1,395 list price U.S., orderable directly from Sun and authorized Sun Resellers. For more information go to http://www.sun.com/desktop/sunblade150.

SunNetwork[sm] 2002 Conference and Pavilion

The SunNetwork[sm] Conference and Pavilion is the only conference dedicated to showcasing end-to-end solutions from Sun and its partners that have revolutionized the Internet, networking and computing industries. The SunNetwork Conference will take place September 18-20, 2002 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Register now at http://sun.com/sunnetwork and be among the first to see a new generation of technologies that make the Net work.

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.

SPEC and the benchmark names SPECfp and SPECint are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. SPEC CPU2000 benchmark results stated above reflect results submitted and/or published on www.spec.org as of August 13, 2002. For the latest SPEC CPU2000 benchmark results, visit http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000. As of August 13, 2002, the Sun Blade 150 workstation scored 276 SPECint2000 and 246 SPECfp2000 with a base system entry price of $1,395 at www.sun.com; the HP B2600 scored 403 SPECint2000 and 440 SPECfp2000 with a base system entry price of $6,695 as of August 16, 2002, as shown at www.hp.com.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) and Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL), achieved record-breaking ECperf benchmark results with Oracle9i Application Server (Oracle9iAS) on Sun Fire[tm] 3800 Midframe servers, surpassing IBM and HP/BEA Systems configurations.[1] The Oracle9iAS and Sun Fire 3800 ECperf performance benchmark testing result is 39 percent better than the top result for IBM WebSphere on an IBM platform, and 63 percent better than the BEA WebLogic on an HP platform.

Sun Fire Servers and Oracle9iAS Deliver the Industry’s Best Performance

The ECperf top performance result for the Sun and Oracle configuration achieved 61,862 BBops/min@Std with a price performance metric of $28/BBops/min@Std. Testing results can be found at http://ecperf.theserverside.com. This certified benchmark was conducted by Sun with three Sun Fire 3800 servers, configured with 24 UltraSPARC® III 900 MHz processors, running on the Solaris[tm] Operating Environment and Oracle9i Application Server Release 2. This winning combination beats IBM’s 12 Application Servers running WebSphere, configured with a total of 24 processors, published best result of 44,294.97 BBops/min@Std and HP’s Application Servers running WebLogic, configured with 16 processors for a published best result of 37,791 BBops/min@Std. Together, Sun Fire servers and Oracle9iAS demonstrate performance leadership, and deliver a highly scalable and cost-effective infrastructure for the development and deployment of business applications and Web services.

About the Sun Fire 3800 Midframe Servers

With rock-solid availability and hot-swappable components that are common to the entire Sun Fire Midframe and high-end family of servers, the Sun Fire 3800 server helps maximize application service levels with mainframe-class availability features such as full hardware redundancy, Dynamic System Domains, Dynamic Reconfiguration, Hot CPU upgrades, hot-swappable components and end-to-end data integrity. Sun Fire Midframe servers are the perfect platform for server consolidation, and as a general purpose application and data server for mission-critical applications.

About Oracle9i Application Server

Oracle solves the IT challenge of integrating fragmented middleware products to run an e-business by providing one product that can replace more than 12 separate point products from other vendors. Oracle9i Application Server features full J2EE support, built-in enterprise portal software, high-speed caching, business intelligence, rapid application development, application and business integration, Web services and more, all in one package. Oracle’s extensive investment in application server research and development has enabled the company to deliver a lightweight J2EE based engine and extended caching capabilities that allow companies to save on infrastructure costs by scaling with software instead of hardware.

About the ECperf Benchmark

ECperf is a benchmark of application servers utilizing the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), which are used extensively today to power critical business applications and Web services. The ECperf benchmark is representative of real-world business applications including customer orders, inventory, manufacturing, and supply chain management. The ECperf performance benchmark measures how quickly a specific system configuration delivers output. For more information on ECperf go to http://java.sun.com/j2ee/ecperf.

[1] As of July 9, 2002. IBM, $23/BBops/min@Std. BEA on HP, $36/BBops/min@Std. For more information, please visit, http://ecperf.theserverside.com

About Oracle

Oracle is the world’s largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at www.oracle.com.

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, Solaris, Sun Fire, Java, J2EE, Sun ONE 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.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation.

ECperf is a trademark of Sun Microsystems Inc.

Faster Processor Provides 72 Percent Performance Boost for Government, Telecommunications and Scalability with 900 MHZ UltraSPARC® III Technology

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.