SYSTEMS

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Demonstrating its intense focus on the high performance technical computing (HPTC) market, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) has posted dramatic growth on this year's "Top 500" supercomputers list with 88 customer entries, up from 37 on this year's June list. While IBM and HP lost more than 30 systems each on the new list, Sun more than doubled its presence, surpassing SGI and moving up from fourth position to third. The new listings help illustrate Sun's tremendous growth in the HPTC market over the last six years. The new Top 500 list shows that 18 percent of the organizations - in a range of commercial and technical industries - base their systems on Sun hardware and software. The Sun Fire[tm] 15K server, in particular, has proven to be an overwhelming success in the HPTC market, powering the systems of numerous HPTC facilities worldwide. On the latest Top 500 list, the Sun Fire 15K server, powered by UltraSPARC® III processors and the Solaris[tm] Operating Environment, is at the heart of more than 90 percent of the Sun-based entries. "Compared to players who have been in the HPTC space for decades, Sun has quickly risen to the upper echelons of the market based on our relentless focus on delivering innovative supercomputing technologies, systems and solutions," said Clark Masters, executive vice president of Sun's Enterprise Server Products group. "The future of the supercomputing industry belongs to open architectures and cluster computing - which Sun actively champions and implements. This explains why we've been able to increase our standing on the supercomputer list by more than three-fold compared to last year's list, and have steadily moved up the list, from fifth place a year ago, to fourth place this past June, to third place today." Additionally, according to IDC, Sun has increased its high performance technical computing market share faster than any other vendor, increasing its market presence by approximately 20 percent since 1996. And Sun continues to improve its position in the market with the introduction of innovative HPTC technologies, such as grid computing and HPC clustering software.