ACADEMIA

SANTA CLARA, CA -- In the latest ranking of supercomputers around the world, based on the IDC Balanced Rating test, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) easily surpasses the competition in the Technical Enterprise Computer (TENT) category. Supercomputer sites powered by Sun systems represent 30 percent of the top 50 sites in the category, more than any other vendor on the list. Additionally, in the ranking of Clustered Enterprise computers, a subsection of the TENT category, results show that more of the top performing sites run on Sun systems - over 50 percent of the top 46 clusters - than on all other competitive offerings combined. In related news, IDC released market share results for the high performance technical computing (HPC) market in the first quarter of 2002. According to the figures, Sun continues its positive momentum in the space taking the leadership position in the Technical Divisional category - systems priced between $250,000 and $999,000 - with 42 percent share. In the overall HPC space, Sun garnered 20 percent share of revenue representing a one percent quarter-over-quarter gain versus sequential losses by its closest competitors. "Over the last five years Sun has increased its HPC (technical server) market share faster than any other vendor. The high performance computing world is addressing ever more complex problems that require powerful and well balanced computers. Computer systems with high processor peak performance alone can't effectively solve the more complex technical problems required to make new scientific discoveries. The most useful HPC systems require powerful processors combined with strong memory bandwidth, robust I/O capability, scalability and reliability. Using the new IDC approach for comparing HPC computers, Sun products scored very well in both the Technical Enterprise and Clustered Enterprise market segments. These are higher growth segments within the overall HPC market," said Dr. Earl Joseph II, IDC Research Director. Developed with extensive input from the high performance computing (HPC) community, the IDC rankings use a comprehensive, standard measurement called the IDC Balanced Rating to document a significant portion of the world's installed HPC systems. By measuring processor performance, memory system capability and scaling capability, the IDC Balanced Rating highlights overall system performance of installed systems. The TENT category, in particular, ranks capacity systems sold for $1 million or more. A rapidly growing segment of the HPC market, enterprise supercomputers are delivering an increasingly positive impact on the performance of corporate and institutional data centers around the world. Some of the real-world applications running on Sun supercomputers include: massive genomics databases, computational fluid dynamics, cosmology, weather modeling, as well as national security and defense applications. Some of the Sun systems fueling the top performing enterprise supercomputing sites include the Sun Fire(TM) 15K, the Sun Enterprise(TM) 10000, and clusters of Sun Fire 6800 and V880 servers. These systems and other powerful Sun servers are installed in a diverse array of organizations from university research labs that determine the origins of the universe to medical facilities that develop cures for childhood diseases and dedicated supercomputer centers that work on the most challenging life sciences projects. "Just six years ago, Sun made its foray into the HPC market and today, as a result of a strong commitment to developing superior HPC solutions, our systems are outperforming and outselling competitors who have been players in this space for a decade or more," said Dr. Stephen Perrenod, group manager, HPC marketing, Sun Microsystems. "Our solutions are based on Sun's highly scalable, end-to-end architecture and comprehensive, integratable software and hardware stacks, including support for clustered and Grid computing solutions. Now with 20 percent market share, it is clear that Sun's solutions are critical building blocks for the HPC market."