INDUSTRY

SAN FRANCISCO -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. unveiled new and faster products that raise the bar for performance in its desktop and graphics product lines: the new Sun(TM) XVR-1200 and XVR-100 graphics accelerators, faster SunPCi(TM) III PC co-processor card and SunBlade(TM) 2000 workstations. The Sun XVR-1200 graphics accelerator, Sun's most advanced workstation-based 3D graphics board yet, delivers up to five times the visual processing performance than its predecessor. Both the Sun XVR-1200 and XVR-100 graphics accelerators deliver the best available graphics technology, quality and flexibility to Sun Solaris(TM) Operating System-based desktop system users. Additionally, Sun increased performance in its SunPCi III co-processor card, a unique product that is designed to allow enterprises to run both the Solaris Operating System and Windows operating system (OS) concurrently on Sun UNIX(R) workstations. "In technical markets image quality and accuracy is absolutely critical because of the magnitude of the decisions being made daily based on graphical data. It can mean more precise drilling in the oil and gas industry, or enable higher accuracy in delicate surgical procedures," said Dr. Jon Peddie, President of The graphics marketing consulting firm Jon Peddie Research. "By bringing mission-critical high-performance visualization tools and technologies to the desktop at affordable prices Sun has positioned themselves to take a leadership position in imaging and visualization, a market we forecast will hit $25 billion in 2005." Sun Raises Bar on High-End 3D Graphics and Base 2D Graphics Getting more information from your data through high-quality graphics and images can be key to making better, more accurate decisions in a timely manner. It also can mean improved profitability for engineers and scientists working with high-end MCAD/MCAE, EDA, geotechnical engineering/GIS, education, general sciences and healthcare applications. The new Sun XVR-1200 graphics accelerator provides these customers with high-performance 3D graphics and fast texture mapping capabilities, which result in richer and more realistic on-screen images and detail. It features advanced texture mapping capabilities, full scene multi-sampled antialiasing, per pixel lighting effects and virtual texture mapping support. The Sun XVR-1200 fully implements OpenGL(R) 1.3, and delivers five times the graphics performance and over four times the texture mapping performance of the Sun(TM) Expert3D graphics accelerator. Through Sun's early access initiative, the first iForce(SM) partners to have experienced performance gains with the new Sun XVR-1200 graphics accelerator in SunBlade 2000 workstations and Sun Fire(TM) 6800 servers include EDS Unigraphics V18.X, Unigraphics NX1, I-DEAS 9 and I-DEAS 10 NX Series; Opticore Opus Studio and Opus Realizer; PTC Pro/ENGINEER; and Schlumberger GeoFrame GeoViz and GeoFrame Modeling Office. Sun is replacing its entry-level Sun(TM) PGX64 hardware with the new Sun XVR-100 graphics accelerator, which delivers an affordable, high-quality entry-level 2D graphics solution for software development, entry-level EDA, finance and management, and support applications. The Sun XVR-100 features 32 MB memory, dual display support, high resolution support and multiple platform support. Sun Provides the Best of Both Worlds in a Single System Sun also significantly enhanced its PC interoperability offering today with the faster SunPCi III co-processor card, which helps enable users to run virtually any Windows based technical and productivity applications side-by-side with Solaris Operating System at native PC speeds. The SunPCi III co-processor card allows the sharing of files, data and system resources between the two environments, allowing Sun workstation and workgroup server users to be more productive and efficient. Additionally, the SunPCi III co-processor card helps enable customers to run Windows Office applications in a higher security environments by wrapping it within the secure Solaris OE to improve overall reliability and security. For software developers wishing to develop for multiple hardware platforms and operating environments, the SunPCi III co-processor helps enable them to run their development environments of choice -- whether Windows, the Solaris or Java(TM) platforms -- on a single system, with familiar development tools and productivity applications. Multiple SunPCi co-processor cards in one system allow developers to run development and debugging environments simultaneously, which can improve productivity. Emulated disk support gives developers the ability to checkpoint their build environments and qualify between different Microsoft OS versions all from the same system. The new SunPCi III co-processor card leverages a 1.4GHz processor that can deliver 90 percent higher megahertz with up to twice the CPU performance than the previous board. The SunPCi III card also features an advanced AGP 8x on-board 24-bit graphics accelerator and some of the latest I/O technologies, including USB 2.0 and 1394a capabilities, onboard Ethernet and support for up to 1GB of PC2100 RAM. Sun Blade 2000 Workstations Deliver Real-world Results Further demonstrating its commitment to help lower customers' total cost of ownership, Sun enhanced the performance of its Sun Blade 2000 workstation with a faster UltraSPARC(R) III 1.2GHz processor, and reduced the system price by up to 30 percent (See related announcement http://sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2003-04/sunflash.20030408.4.html ). The faster Sun Blade 2000 system is the first Sun workstation to utilize the new high-speed processor. It delivers application gains up to 20 percent and floating point performance up to 37 percent, while reducing price-performance by as much as 63 percent at a lower power consumption, all compared to the current flagship UltraSPARC III Cu 1.05 processor. Pricing and Availability Base configurations for the Sun Blade 2000 workstation start at $9,995 U.S list, which includes a single 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC III CPU, 1GB of RAM, Sun XVR-100 graphics accelerator and 73GB hard disk. The Sun XVR-1200 graphics accelerator is available for both the Sun Blade 2000 workstation and the Sun Fire 6800 server, with prices starting at $2,995 U.S. list. The Sun XVR-100 graphics accelerator is scheduled to become available on April 15, 2003, and is priced at $295 U.S. list. The Sun PCi III co-processor card is available today worldwide as an option starting at $695 U.S. list. All products are available from Sun and Sun iForce partners worldwide.