SANTA CLARA, CA -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) announced another performance benchmark that provides further evidence of Sun's system performance superiority. Tests on a Sun Fire(TM) 15K server, running the Java(TM) 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE(TM)) have established the F15K server as the fastest performing system on the market. According to the SPECjbb(TM) 2000 benchmark, the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation's benchmark for gauging server-side Java performance, Sun's offerings achieved world record results measuring 404,472 operations per second, more than 64,000 operations more than IBM's largest UNIX® system. ``Despite IBM's attempts to refashion the mainframe into a web server, IBM's mainframe has so far failed to run this benchmark,'' said Steve Campbell, senior director of marketing, Enterprise Systems Products, Sun Microsystems, Inc. ``The delivery of services on demand requires a robust, powerful and highly reliable technology platform, the combination of Sun Fire servers, the Solaris(TM) Operating Environment and Java(TM) technology create an optimal environment for users' web services needs.'' The benchmark was run on a 72-way Sun Fire 15K configuration with 900MHz UltraSPARC(TM) III Cu processors and 288GB of memory running the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE), version 1.4.0. The platform utilizes the latest version of J2SE (version 1.4) technology and demonstrates Sun's ability to deliver the leading performing technology platform. These results show the benefits of Sun's open offerings and demonstrate the benefits of the Sun's(TM) Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) -- the vision, architecture, platform and expertise for developing and delivering services on demand today. Sun's commitment to delivering highly tuned Java application performance is seen by the fact that its servers have been the first to cross the performance barriers of 100,000 op/s, 200,000 op/s, 300,000 op/s, and now 400,000 op/s in the SPECjbb2000 benchmark. The Sun Fire 15K server also holds the world record on other performance benchmarks that closely model real-world applications such as the SAP-SD 2-Tier and the TPC-H benchmark. On the TPC-H benchmark, Sun offers two times the price-performance of any competitor. Sun Fire server's feature full hardware redundancy and I/O multi-pathing, online upgrades, concurrent maintenance, accelerated system recovery, remote monitoring and CPU power control. From supporting smaller Internet applications to enabling server consolidation and data warehousing, the record-setting Sun high-end and Midframe servers deliver industry-leading real world performance, demonstrated by record benchmarks including the PeopleSoft 8 General Ledger, Oracle Apps Benchmark, PeopleSoft Financials, and TPC-H. For more information visit www.spec.org or www.sun.com