PHYSICS

Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Oracle Corporation today announced that Sun's first AMD Opteron processor-based server, the Sun Fire(TM) V20z, running Oracle Application Server 10g, has achieved an overall SPECjAppServer2002 price/performance world record, and it offers customers a 37 percent better price/performance than previous DualNode results(1). SPECjAppServer2002 is a client/server benchmark for measuring the performance of Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition J2EE-based application servers using a subset of J2EE APIs in a complete end-to-end Java application. It is the only industry-accepted benchmark to measure J2EE platform performance connecting into a database and is designed to model a manufacturing, supply-chain management and order/inventory environments. This record was achieved by testing a dual-node configuration with a Sun Fire V20z running the Oracle Application Server 10g, and a second Sun Fire V20z as a database server running the Oracle 9i Database, Release 2, connected to a Sun StorEdge 3310 Ultra3 SCSI Array. Each system was equipped with two 2.2 GHz AMD Opteron processors (model 248) and used Red Hat 3.0 Enterprise Linux as the operating system. Oracle Application Server 10g is an integrated, standards-based software platform that allows organizations of all sizes to be more responsive to changing business requirements. Oracle Application Server 10g features full support for J2EE and grid computing, built-in enterprise portal software, high-speed caching, business intelligence, rapid application development, application and business integration, wireless capabilities, Web services and more, all in one package. Because Oracle Application Server 10g is optimized for enterprise grid computing, it enables customers to realize better availability of their IT systems and lower hardware and administration costs. The dual-processor Sun Fire V20z server delivers high performance, reliability and scalability in a low-cost, ultra-dense, rack-optimized 1U form factor. With a single architecture, the Sun Fire V20z server supports both 32-bit and 64-bit computing, allowing customers to maintain their existing x86 infrastructure while, enabling a smooth migration to next-generation 64-bit operating systems and applications. In addition, the Sun Fire V20z server offers OS choice, including the reliable, secure Solaris Operating Environment, RedHat Linux or SUSE Linux, and is Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) certified. More information can be found at www.spec.org and www.sun.com. (1) As of April 21, 2004: Two Sun Fire V20z servers, each equipped with 2 AMD Opteron 248 2.2 GHz processors, delivered a result of 690.13 TOPS at $101.10/TOPS for the SPECjAppServer2002 benchmark in the DualNode category. For the latest results see http://www.spec.org/