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SAN FRANCISCO, SunNetwork 2003 Conference and Pavilion -- Greg Papadopoulos, Sun's chief technology officer, outlined Sun's innovative approach to the next generation of computing that will create a "New System" to deploy communication, storage and computing elements virtually across large networks where needed. Sun's innovations, which come at a critical juncture in computing, combine new approaches to software development with advances in processor design that will deliver enormous competitive advantage to Sun and its customers. Because of the products Sun will deliver as part of the new system, customers will be able to invest less in hardware and software and ongoing management, yet realize far greater ability to deliver computing services as needed around even the largest networks. New systems will yield a significant opportunity for customers to further realize Sun's vision that The Network Is The Computer(TM). "As software is increasingly developed for large groups of people at the network level, instead of being written for a single machine, computing systems must adjust," Papadopoulos said. "Combine this with recent advances in processor capabilities and we have an opportunity to dramatically improve efficiencies and competitive advantage by sharing computing resources across the network, servicing a growing number of users and fundamentally re-engineering the structure of the processors themselves." Papadopoulos was joined by David Yen, EVP Processor and Network products, who said that advances in the complexity of chip design offer a chance to dedicate several parts of each chip to processing individual "threads" of a program. That dramatically reduces the amount of time spent waiting for slower memory chips to catch up with the processor, and exponentially increases the productivity of the entire chip. Areas of the chip that have traditionally been devoted to "tricks" to deal with the slow speed of memory can now be set aside for tasks now performed by other hardware components, such as security. This "divide and conquer" approach to processor design means customers can get the same performance from fewer servers, saving on everything from power consumption to floor space. At the same time, advanced software that can allocate needed resources where they are required ensures that the remaining servers are used to full capacity, further reducing the cost of computing for the enterprise. Sun is uniquely positioned to offer this system because it has all four of the fundamental pieces needed: the advanced design of the SPARC(R) processor; 20 years of operating system design based on dealing with computing "threads;" 64-bit architecture that supports the memory and bandwidth required for efficient use of the new system model; and a secure and reliable operating system built from the ground up to handle the job, Solaris(TM).