INDUSTRY

During its quarterly Network Computer '04 launch today, Sun Microsystems, Inc. introduced two new Solaris powered UltraSPARC IV servers-the Sun Fire V490 and Sun Fire V890-powered by breakthrough Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology that can double application throughput in the same physical footprint as its predecessors while maintaining full binary compatibility. The new Sun Fire V890 server builds on Sun's leadership in the 8-way market to help deliver the best price/performance starting at under $50K (U.S. list). The Sun Fire V890 is half the price of a similarly configured system from HP and runs 10 times more ISV applications with a price tag that is 20 percent lower than IBM's p570. Sun also continued to expand its systems portfolio to include AMD Opteron processor-based systems with the recently announced Sun Fire V40z server, Sun Java Workstation W1100z and Sun Java Workstation W2100z all running the Solaris Operating System (OS) and also capable of running Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux or Microsoft Windows with Microsoft Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) certifications. "Sun is taking the enterprise server market to an entirely new level with record-breaking performance, application throughput and system utilization," said David Yen, executive vice president, Scalable Systems Group at Sun. "Today, we're capping the first wave of our innovative SPARC/Solaris roadmap by doubling the application throughput of our midrange systems with UltraSPARC IV. This is just the beginning of the exponential performance gains that will be afforded by future generations of Sun's Chip Multithreading technology powered by Solaris." Today, Sun also previewed an extension of the systems network architecture, with radically secure applications management technology that can significantly advance the security in network computing. The technology, which comes from Sun's acquisition of Nauticus Networks, will add resource optimization capabilities in upcoming Sun systems, and is designed to improve price/performance and utilization in end-to-end service delivery by up to ten times. Sun Sets New Performance Records on a Variety of Workloads The new Sun Fire V490, Sun Fire V890 and Sun Fire V40z servers, Sun Java Workstation W1100z, and Sun Java Workstation W2100z deliver record-breaking throughput and world-record price/performance to tackle any datacenter workload. Throughput Performance and Investment Protection: The Sun Fire V490 and Sun Fire V890 are available today at starting prices of $30,995 (U.S. list) and $39,995 (U.S. list) respectively. The Sun Fire V490 and Sun Fire V890 servers deliver up to twice the application throughput of Sun's previous midrange server systems, while driving unprecedented levels of utilization. The Sun Fire V490 and Sun Fire V890 servers have set world-record benchmarks for sub-$50K platforms, outperforming equivalent systems from HP and IBM in the 4- and 8-way space: The Sun Fire V490 server achieved world record price/performance on the 1TB TPC-H benchmark, demonstrating the highest performance data warehousing and database architecture at this price point. On the Lotus Domino R6iNotes benchmark, which simulates email users accessing their mailboxes through the web, the Sun Fire V890 server set a triple world-record in the 8 processor class of systems for best performance, highest number of users per CPU, and best price/performance, demonstrating outstanding processing power for a sub-$50K platform. The Sun Fire V890 server also confirms Sun's leadership in the High Performance Computing (HPC) marketplace by producing the best SPECompM2001 performance result for all 8-way servers. It eclipses the recent results posted by a similarly equipped HP AlphaServer ES80 system by up to 17 percent. World-record Price/Performance: Sun's comprehensive line of x86-based servers was further enhanced with the introduction of the 4-way AMD Opteron processor-based Sun Fire V40z server. It delivers world-record price/performance for the most demanding 32- and 64-bit workloads, demonstrated by industry-leading benchmark results. The combination of Sun Fire V20z and Sun Fire V40z servers running Sun's Solaris OS delivered a world-record SPECjAppServer2002 MultipleNode benchmark result. At U.S. $82/TOPS@MultipleNode, this result sets a new price/performance record as well as demonstrates the ability to build the complete infrastructure solution based on industry-leading technologies. On two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark, which emulated typical business workloads, consisting of complete order and invoice processing, the Sun Fire V40z server posted a world-record result for 4-way systems on Linux. This result outperforms comparable NEC, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens and IBM servers configured with either Intel Xeon or Intel Itanium processors by up to 64 percent, and a comparable HP server configured with AMD Opteron processors by six percent. Results referenced are current as of September 13, 2004. The benchmarks fully comply with the SAP Benchmark Council regulations and have been audited and certified by SAP AG. For the latest results, visit www.sap.com/benchmark. Sun's new line of ultimate performance x86-based workstations feature simultaneous 32- and 64-bit computing, large memory support and record-breaking performance results for high-performance industry-recognized application suites: The Sun Java Workstation W2100z brings the real computing power to the desktop as demonstrated by the best SPECompM2001 performance result for all 2-way systems. The Sun Java Workstation W2100z is a development platform that provides a portable and scalable foundation for developing parallel applications. On the BLAST benchmark, the Sun Java Workstation W1100z running the Solaris 10 OS, achieved up to 61 percent better performance than the Dell Precision 650 workstation running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0. Sun Provides Early Glimpse of Tomorrow's Networking Technology Sun also revealed select capabilities of new networking technology - from its acquisition of Nauticus Networks - designed for integration in future Sun systems to add additional virtualization and resource optimization capabilities. In preliminary tests, Sun's secure applications management technology showed a ten-fold price/performance improvement over existing service delivery offerings, achieving world-record capabilities such as 10,000 SSL connections per second and 2Gbps of cryptographic throughput. "Sun is upping the ante once again on the competition. We're delivering a comprehensive set of technologies for the datacenter that IBM, HP and Dell can't match," said John Fowler, executive vice president, Network Systems Group at Sun. "We offer customers system combinations to handle every conceivable datacenter task, big or small, with SPARC and Opteron processors running Solaris in addition to supporting Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux and Windows. What's more, with the Nauticus acquisition, we are adding highly secure applications management to our server product line, with dramatic price/performance value for our customers."