INDUSTRY

SANTA CLARA, CA -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced the availability of Sun(TM) ONE Studio 7, Compiler Collection, a collection of C, C++ and Fortran compilers and integrated debugger. Formerly named Forte Compiler Collection, the new release is optimized for developers writing code and compiling binaries for the newly announced Solaris(TM) 9 Operating Environment (OE). The Compiler Collection provides a comprehensive, productive set of tools for developing high performance applications in C, C++ and Fortran. "An important element of the Sun ONE Web services strategy is giving developers the ability to extract value from existing legacy applications," said Peter Young, vice president and general manager, Sun ONE Studio Tools. "The exceptionally high performance compilers announced today are the first that are optimized for the Solaris 9 OE, and support that strategy." "Utilizing Sun ONE Studio 7, Compiler Collection, we realized significant run-time performance gains for the upcoming Version 9 of SAS software running on the Solaris operating environment," said Clarke Thacher, senior software manager at SAS. "The new compiler helps us to optimize millions of lines of source code. For customers running powerful SAS business intelligence solutions on Sun platforms, this translates into enhanced speed and performance for customer-relationship management (CRM), risk management and other mission-critical applications." The new compilers dramatically accelerate the performance, throughput and responsiveness of multithreaded applications running on the Solaris 9 OE. Data from recent lab tests indicate that Sun ONE Studio 7, Compiler Collection performs 22% better than the previous release using the SPEC OMP2001 (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation OpenMP Benchmark Suite) industry standard benchmark (www.spec.org/hpg/omp2001/). Synergistic design practices between the processor and compiler design teams led to dramatic performance gains (over 50% peak on some tests) in SPEC CPU results with the new 900 MHz UltraSPARC III Cu processor (http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2001q4/cpu2000-20011119-01121.asc) Improved in this release is support for "interval arithmetic," which enables developers to move beyond the limitations of the traditional "floating point" computing model. Floating point calculations are effective for deriving exacting results from precise input. But to obtain accurate results for some types of problems, calculations must be performed using numbers with an associated range. For example, the accuracy of data produced by many measuring instruments is represented by a range. Failing to capture the relevant error analysis for this type of data input can jeopardize application quality. This affects computation-intensive areas as diverse as crash simulation, rocket trajectories and stock portfolio management. Interval arithmetic performs calculations on ranges rather than single finite numerical values, providing an accessible and efficient means of solving some of the most complicated problems. Sun ONE Studio 7, Compiler Collection includes an interactive, source-level debugger. The debugger improves application quality with advanced features, such as Runtime Error Checking, that assist developers in identifying hard-to-find bugs during the development cycle and before the application goes into production. With the debugger, developers have complete control of the dynamic execution of a program, including collecting performance and memory usage data, monitoring memory access and detecting memory leaks. The debugger improves application quality by enabling developers to determine quickly where and why a program may be having problems. The Sun ONE Studio 7 compilers are based on open standards and are key components of the Sun(TM) Open Net Environment (Sun ONE). The SPARC(TM) versions of the compilers are optimized for the best runtime performance on the SPARC architecture, maximizing customer investments in the Sun platform. Other new features in Sun ONE Studio 7, Compiler Collection include: -- Complete C, C++ and Fortran 95 language systems -- Enables developers to build high performance 32- and 64-bit applications. Sixty-four-bit technology offers benefits to developers, including an increase in capacity to accommodate larger problem-solving and the storing of large quantities of data, and an increase in calculation speed for complex mathematical operations. -- Compatible software components to easily compile, build and debug applications. -- Multithreading development tools to develop and debug multithreaded/multiprocessing applications. -- Product configuration for command-line compile/debug users. This means developers buy only the tools they need. For example, compilers can be purchased without an integrated development environment (IDE). -- Choice of binary-compatible default or STLport standard Library with C++ -- STLport is a common standard template library now natively supported in the compilers. This saves developers time and can result in increased performance. -- OpenMP C++ v1.0 API support -- A new standard, popular in technical computing, for multi-process programming. This enables developers to write highly parallel C++ applications without having to write explicit threading calls. -- OpenMP Fortran 2.0 API support -- Enables use of Fortran 90 array syntax. -- Fortran 2000 standard (not a final standard yet) -- Early support for key features emerging in the nascent Fortran 2000 standard. Availability Sun ONE Studio 7, Compiler Collection is available immediately, starting at the price of US$995.00. Users can download the software at www.sun.com/software/sundev/suncc.