SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) will bolster its growing stake in the visualization and visual simulation markets with the unveiling of innovative 3D graphics products and new developments with industry-leading software vendors at the Siggraph 2002 Conference. Announcements from Sun will include the development release program of its breakthrough graphics accelerator, the Sun XVR-4000, a technology aimed squarely at the emerging Workgroup Visualization market. Early testing of the XVR-4000 graphics accelerator shows it should push Sun's performance, features and visual quality to unprecedented levels at a fraction of the cost of today's competitive products. Designed to be a better alternative to SGI's Onyx systems with Infinite Reality graphics, Sun's new server-based graphics systems are being built to deliver more affordable solutions for immersive and collaborative visualization environments. Through the development release program, Sun will work closely with leading software vendors and customers to thoroughly test and tune the new graphics technology for application performance and workload stability. The development release program, part of Sun's rigorous quality assurance and product certification process, helps to ensure that new products are market-ready and optimized for production use. The program will run through the next two quarters; Sun expects to ship the new XVR-4000 graphics accelerator before the end of the year. Sun Microsystems Demonstrates Its Latest Technologies Sun will provide Siggraph attendees with demonstrations from key software and hardware vendors, including Barco, CG2, EDS, Multigen-Paradigm, Mechdyne, Opticore, Open Scene Graph, SEOS, Side Effects Software, StereoGraphics, TGS, University of Illinois and VRCO. Sun, the world's leading UNIX workstation vendor, will also feature its range of 3D graphics products, new Java 3D 1.3 technology, and its lineup of 64-bit workstations and servers, including: -- Sun Blade(TM) 2000 Workstation: The flagship model of Sun's workstation line, the Sun Blade 2000 features dual 1.05 GHz UltraSPARC(R) III CU processors, proven 64-bit architecture, high-end 3D visualization capabilities, and the robust Solaris(TM) Operating Environment. It is also the key platform for Sun's Personal Visualization Systems, which deliver high-end 3D graphics solutions to the desktop. -- Sun XVR-1000 Graphics Accelerator: The industry's first graphics accelerator to support dynamic multisampling and to reach 30-bit color output, the Sun XVR-1000 graphics accelerator also provides 360 MB of on-board memory to deliver unsurpassed image accuracy and color for the most demanding applications. -- Sun XVR-500 Graphics Accelerator: Doubling the geometry performance and improving texture mapping performance by 50 percent over Sun's previous entry-level offerings, the Sun XVR-500 graphics accelerator is perfect for traditional 3D workstation graphics applications and is Sun's most affordable 3D graphics card for entry-level visualization applications. Based on 3Dlabs' Wildcat architecture, the XVR-500 graphics accelerator features dedicated texture mapping, high performance graphics acceleration, stereoscopic video graphics support, frame lock, high resolution 3D display, multiple display capabilities, and professional color output. Sun Grid Engine Boosts Productivity of Render Farms Sun will highlight its leadership in grid computing at Siggraph, showcasing the rendering strength of Sun Grid Engine and Sun Grid Engine, Enterprise Edition software. A leader in this technology space with more than 5,000 deployed grids worldwide -- and growing at a pace of 70 new grids per week -- Sun can help design studios and animation shops gain competitive advantage and dramatically reduce production time. StereoGraphics Demonstrates Groundbreaking 3D Digital Movie Capabilities The Christie 3D Cinema Server will be demonstrated in Sun's booth, featuring one of the world's first 3D digital movie systems to project 3D movies from a single server on a single DLP projector, representing a major step forward in 3D digital cinema technology. The state-of-the-art platform offers simple setup and maintenance, and can display digital 3D movies that were originally shot in digital or analog mode. The server, based on StereoGraphics Cinema Server technology, uses a Sun Blade 2000 workstation as its base platform and incorporates specialized software that takes full advantage of the Sun StorEdge(TM) MultiPack Fiber Channel disk array architecture to deliver high quality stereo images to the projector. The movie content is uncompressed to ensure maximum stereo image quality. And by taking full advantage of the Sun Expert3D graphics accelerator, which supports quad-buffered stereo output, a stereoscopic image is output through a single video channel to the projector.