VISUALIZATION

SANTA CLARA, CA -- Expanding its presence in the growing visualization and graphics market, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that Opticore Opus software, Opticore's powerful 3D real-time visualization applications, will be made available on the Solaris(TM) Operating Environment, Sun's award-winning platform for network servers and workstations. Offering advanced design customers in such markets as aerospace and automotive manufacturing a new 64-bit platform alternative, the combination of Opticore's visualization and design/styling tools with Sun's UltraSPARC® architecture and Solaris platform broadens the market with new high-performance hardware and graphics options. Sun's delivery of high-end visualization capabilities to the more affordable desktop space will help define a new market category called personal visualization. The Sun-Opticore relationship adds greater depth to Sun's visualization offerings in the manufacturing and design industries. Designers are already reducing costs by shifting from physical testing to virtual prototyping, using Opticore's Opus applications to create and evaluate the design concept in real-time, reducing lead times and enabling the designer to reject or accept a concept before a physical prototype is created. These capabilities are particularly important in the technical markets that Sun serves, such as the automotive industry, in which multiple product concepts with intricate details and critical quality requirements must be tested numerous times throughout the design process. ``Opticore's software suite running on Sun's powerful high-performance platform will enable both Sun and Opticore customers to make faster and better design decisions,'' says Patrik Larking, vice president of Customer Service at Opticore. ``The need for better performance and visual quality is increasing as the complexity of the data being produced by our customers increases. This new relationship is a natural step forward for us, since it enables customers to present, evaluate and communicate more data, more accurately and with higher quality. This will help them cut lead-times and greatly reduce the number of physical prototypes required in the design process at a very low cost.'' ``As Sun takes the wraps off of its new Sun Blade(TM) 2000 workstation and Personal Visualization Systems, Opticore's powerful Opticore Opus software is an important addition to Sun's expanding presence in the growing markets of graphics and visualization,'' said Robbie Turner, vice president of Client and Technical Market Products, Sun Microsystems. ``With Sun's proven 64-bit architecture and robust Solaris platform combined with Opticore's industry-leading 3D visualization tools, we're giving design and manufacturing customers high-end visualization solutions at desktop price points.'' For more information visit www.sun.com or www.opticore.com