Sun Microsystems Marks New Era in Network Computing With Breakthrough CoolThreads Technology - Unveils High-Performance, Eco-Responsible Server Line Sun Closes Year of Innovation With Major Global Launch of New Sun Fire Servers
Powered by CoolThreads Technology; Unveils Powerful 9.6 GHz, Eight Core
Microprocessor Design to Leave Competitors in Dual-Core Dust; Unveils New
Purchase Programs and Plans to Open Source Processor Technology to Developer
Communities
NEW YORK, Dec. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sun Network Computing 2005 Q4 (NC05Q4) - Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today made several game changing announcements, including the early arrival of its revolutionary new 9.6 GHz-based, high-performance systems, led by the Sun Fire(TM) T1000 and T2000 servers with CoolThreads(TM) technology. Continuing its commitment to the developer community and to addressing the growing needs of the next-generation Internet, Sun also announced its intent to open source the company's massively-threaded processor technology to further lower the barriers to innovation and application development. As part of this global product roll-out, taking place over the next two weeks in more than 25 countries, Sun will showcase unprecedented support for its new server line and UltraSPARC(R) T1(TM) microprocessor from a wide range of global technology leaders including Oracle, Symantec and BEA.
For more information related to all of Sun's NC05Q4 announcements, go to Sun's online press kit at http://www.sun.com/presskits/networkcomputing05q4/ .
"Sun's innovations are once again at the forefront of driving the industry and the economic reality of building out the next generation Internet," said Scott McNealy, chairman and CEO, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "This is a quarter filled with global firsts -- the world's first 9.6 GHz industry-standard server, the first truly open source microprocessor, the world's first open source operating system and web services stack, and the world's most complete lineup of sustainable innovations for the growing network infrastructure market. 'The Network is the Computer' has never been more true than today and Sun has never been more competitive."
Sun's major moves across its software, hardware and services offerings are driving some of the most significant changes the industry has seen in years, forever changing the game for datacenter customers. Setting a new industry standard for performance, space and energy efficiency, powered by the breakthrough technology of the UltraSPARC T1 processor, Sun's new server line beats the competition on performance, slashing energy consumption and reducing costly datacenter space requirements. For example, Sun's new systems are more than three times faster than IBM Xeon systems at nearly half the power and cooling costs and with 4.2 times better performance per watt(1). CoolThreads servers also have nearly seven times greater performance than Dell Xeon systems(2) and have 76 percent more performance at 2.3 times lower power consumption than an IBM 4-way Power 5+ system, while costing nearly half as much(3). This new server announcement, along with previous x64 and UltraSPARC IV+ server announcements, make Sun's server line-up the most compelling offering for customers looking to turbocharge their datacenter for the next wave of the Internet.
Changing the Game -- New Products and Offerings from Sun -- NC05Q4
-- Sun Fire T1000/T2000 servers -- Toppling a series of world-record
benchmarks to claim its leading position for price/performance, Sun
announced today the release of the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers
featuring patented CoolThreads technology. A major advancement that
leverages the Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System (OS), the new server line
is based on the recently announced, massively-threaded UltraSPARC T1
processor and offers industry leading, world record price/performance
for web, database and application processing. The new system is
designed to save customers millions in power, cooling and space costs.
The new Sun Fire T2000 server is available immediately, and the Sun
Fire T1000 can be ordered now for delivery in March 2006. Both servers
include a host of new integrated offers designed to stimulate rapid
adoption.
-- OpenSPARC(TM) Project -- Sun announced its intent to open source its
UltraSPARC processor technology and publish certain specifications for
the UltraSPARC-based chip including the source of the design expressed
in Verilog, a verification suite and simulation models, instruction set
architecture specification (UltraSPARC Architecture 2005) and a Solaris
OS port.
-- Try It Before You Buy It -- Given the high level of interest in these
new breakthrough systems, Sun is now offering the industry's largest
"Try and Buy" program that enables customers and ISV partners to test
out a new Sun Fire T1000 or T2000 server running the highly threaded
UltraSPARC T1 processor free of charge for 90 days, with the option to
purchase the system at the end. For more information, please go to:
www.sun.com/emrkt/trycoolthreads.
-- Space, Wattage and Performance (SWaP) Metric -- Sun is also announcing
an important new metric for customers to use as they evaluate their
datacenter efficiencies and systems performance. It is the big picture
for datacenter managers -- it measures Space, Wattage and Performance
(SWaP). The new SWaP metric is the only true measure of
industry-standard server efficiency: performance / (space x power).
-- Full Protection Plans -- Sun also announced two new Full Protection
Plans, integrated system and services programs that offer customers low
total cost of ownership, reduced budgetary risk and increased system
availability. When customers choose the Sun Fire T1000 or T2000 system,
they get more than just a server; they receive the world's most
powerful operating system, Solaris 10, and the option to purchase a
Full Protection Plan that goes far beyond basic break/fix warranty
programs. Sun's Full Protection Plans are simple to purchase, include
the essential, recommended services and offer transparent three-year
pricing that enables customers to predict and better manage their IT
budgets.
-- CoolThreads Prize For Innovation -- Sun launched its CoolThreads
competition to inspire new software development for its breakthrough
Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 server line. In this competition, developers
and ISVs have the opportunity to win $50,000 in cash by developing
ground-breaking applications or improving on existing applications,
within the next six months, for optimal throughput performance and
scaling. For further details about the CoolThreads Developer Contest
and full contest rules, please visit https://coolthreads.dev.java.net .
-- Sun N1(TM) System Management software -- Sun N1 System Manager v1.2 now
includes support for the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers. This
integrated solution allows customers to perform operating system
provisioning and system management of the Sun Fire servers announced
today and Sun's x64 industry-standard systems announced in September.
Sun Management Console 3.6 adds support for several Solaris 10 features
including Dynamic Tracing, Predictive Self-Healing and Solaris
Containers. The Sun N1 Management portfolio includes Sun N1 System
Manager, Sun Management Center, N1 Service Provisioning System and the
Sun N1 Grid Engine. These products help enterprises lower operational
costs and improve business efficiency by simplifying the management of
systems and services in customers' heterogeneous datacenters.
Today's announcements follow on the heels of major product developments announced by Sun throughout the quarter, including:
-- Solaris Enterprise System -- On Nov. 30, Sun announced plans to make
the Java(TM) Enterprise System, Sun N1 Management software and Sun
Studio Developer tools available at no cost for both development and
deployment. All of this software, along with the Solaris OS, will be
integrated into the Solaris Enterprise System making it the only
comprehensive and open infrastructure software platform available
today.
-- Solaris 10 Operating System -- On Nov. 17, Sun expanded its commitment
to delivering and supporting powerful open source solutions for the
enterprise and announced: that it will distribute and support the
Postgres database with the Solaris OS; new features in OpenSolaris
including Solaris Containers for Linux Applications; availability of
the source code for Solaris ZFS, a revolutionary new 128-bit file
system with unprecedented error detection and correction capabilities
and participation in the Xen open source project. Solaris 10, the most
advanced operating system on the planet, is available for both
UltraSPARC and industry standard x86/x64 systems. The Solaris OS is the
only operating system that guarantees binary compatibility on supported
platforms and source code compatibility between UltraSPARC and x64
platforms ensuring that applications written for Sun's UltraSPARC
platform run unmodified on Sun's new Sun Fire systems. The Solaris 10
OS includes innovative features not available on other platforms, such
as DTrace, Predictive Self Healing and Containers, to provide the
highest levels of application performance, availability, security and
consolidation.
-- Sun Summit on 21st Century Eco-Responsibility -- On Nov. 14 at its
first ever Sun Summit on 21st Century Eco-Responsibility, Sun discussed
how its approach to eco-responsible computing is good for the IT
industry and detailed how it is marrying eco-friendly product design
with high performance technologies. Sun's McNealy was joined by Sun CTO
Greg Papadopoulos and a panel of environmental thought leaders to
discuss how eco-responsibility can minimize harm to the planet and
benefit business. For more information or to view the webcast, go to:
http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/environment/index.jsp .
-- UltraSPARC T1 processors with CoolThreads technology -- On Nov. 14 Sun
introduced the UltraSPARC T1, code named "Niagara", as the world's
first high-performance, energy-efficient processor. Using patented
CoolThreads chip multi-threading technology that leverages the threaded
nature of the Solaris 10 OS, the breakthrough chip is the world's first
eco-responsible processor. In an era in which most processors use at
least 40 watts/thread, each SPARC-based CoolThreads processor uses five
percent the energy per thread of Intel Xeon or IBM Power processors at
just two watts per thread. Sun's new processor offers unparalleled
transactional throughput and is designed to save customers millions of
dollars on rising datacenter power, cooling and space costs.
-- Storage Titanium Tape Drive T10000 -- On Nov. 3, Sun introduced the
T10000 enterprise tape drive, extending the value and performance
delivered via StorageTek's earlier T-Series drives, to provide
businesses with fast access to large volumes of information at an
attractive price per gigabyte. Delivering the industry's highest native
tape drive throughput rate (120 megabytes/second), capacity of up to
500 gigabytes uncompressed -- or a terabyte of compressed data on a
single cartridge -- and Fibre Channel and FICON dual-port connectivity,
the T10000 delivers a 250 percent increase in density and 400 percent
increase in throughput speeds over the earlier StorageTek T9940B drive.
-- Developer Community -- On Oct. 26, Sun launched its latest release of
Sun(TM) Studio 11 with enhancements designed to simplify the
development process and deliver the highest optimization and best
performance for the development of scalable 32-bit and 64-bit
applications on multi-core and multi-threaded systems. This results in
an increase in developer productivity while requiring less hardware,
electricity and footprint when deploying these demanding applications
into production. Sun Studio software has contributed to 13 performance
world records announced in 2005, with five recorded on this latest
product release.
-- UltraSPARC IV+ Processor -- On Sept. 20, Sun announced the release of
Sun Fire servers powered by new UltraSPARC IV+ processors. The new
systems offer customers up to a fivefold increase in performance over
previous UltraSPARC processor generations. These recently announced
systems deliver the industry's only "on the fly" upgrade path that
allows customers to protect their investments in existing applications
and infrastructure by leveraging the binary compatibility of the
UltraSPARC processor and the Solaris OS to quickly and easily take
advantage of the latest server technology.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
A singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer"(TM)-- guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world's most important markets. Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at sun.com.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Jacki DeCoster
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
415-294-4482
jacki.decoster@sun.com
650-786-7737
allpress@sun.com
(1) SPECweb2005 -- Sun Fire T2000 (8 cores, 1 chip) 13854 SPECweb2005. IBM x346 (2 cores, 2 chips) 4348 SPECweb2005. SPEC, SPECweb reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Sun Fire T2000 results submitted to SPEC. Other results from www.spec.org as of December 6, 2005. IBM x346 Specifications from brochure, 09/05/05: http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/xseries/x346.html . IBM x346 power rating estimated by calculating 70% of the power supply data reported in the product brochure. Sun Fire T2000 server power consumption of 330 watts taken from measurements made during the benchmark run.
(2) Results from internal tests -- Crypto Processing RSA & DSA sign operations @ 1024-bit. Sun Fire T2000 Server produced 12,850 RSA operations/second. Dell Power Edge 2850 produced 1900 RSA operations/second
(3) Sun Fire T2000 (8 cores, 1 chip) 13854 SPECweb2005. IBM p5 550 (4 cores, 2 chips) 7881 SPECweb2005. SPEC, SPECweb reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Sun Fire T2000 results submitted to SPEC. Other results from www.spec.org as of December 6, 2005. IBM p550 specifications, 10/06/05, from http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hardware/entry/550.html . IBM 550 power ratings calculated by applying 70% of the power supply data published in "Facts and Features Report", 10/06/05, posted at http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hardware/factsfeatures.html . Sun Fire T2000 server power consumption of 330 watts taken from measurements made during the benchmark run. IBM p5 550 based on October 4, 2005 pricing from www.ibm.com configured with 4-way 1.9Ghz Power 5+ processor card with 36MB of L3 cache and with 32GB of Memory (16X2GB DDR2 DIMMs), 2 X 73GB, 10Krpm Ultra320 SCSI disk drives, 2 X 1475W power supplies, 1 x 2-Port 10/100/1000 Base-TX Ethernet PCI-X Adapter and Suse Linux (no cost). Total Cost = $49,907. Sun Fire T2000 Server configured with 1.2 Ghz UltraSPARC T1 processor, 32GB of Memory (16X2GB DDR2 DIMMs), 2 X 73GB, 10Krpm, 2 X power supplies, 4 x 10/100/1000 Base-TX Ethernet ports and Solaris 10. Total Cost = $25,995.
NOTE: Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java, Solaris, Sun Fire, T1, N1, CoolThreads and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the US and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. Oracle, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.
Safe Harbor
This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding Sun's beliefs and expectations regarding the shipping schedule for our Sun Fire T1000 servers. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that are difficult to predict and that may cause actual results to differ materially. The following important factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements: failure to rapidly and successfully develop and introduce new products and manage our inventory; and our reliance on single-source suppliers. Please also refer to Sun's periodic reports that are filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2005 and our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended September 25, 2005. Sun disclaims any obligation and does not undertake to update or revise the forward-looking statements in this press release. SOURCE Sun Microsystems, Inc.
