Sun Microsystems Marks New Era in Network Computing With Breakthrough CoolThreads Technology - Unveils High-Performance, Eco-Responsible Server Line6 March 2006
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-recor enchmarks to claim its leading position for price/performance, Su nnounced today the release of the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 server eaturing patented CoolThreads technology. A major advancement tha everages the Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System (OS), the new server lin s based on the recently announced, massively-threaded UltraSPARC T1
processor and offers industry leading, world record price/performanc or web, database and application processing. The new system i esigned to save customers millions in power, cooling and space costs.
The new Sun Fire T2000 server is available immediately, and the Su ire T1000 can be ordered now for delivery in March 2006. Both server nclude a host of new integrated offers designed to stimulate rapi doption.
-- OpenSPARC(TM) Project -- Sun announced its intent to open source it ltraSPARC processor technology and publish certain specifications fo he UltraSPARC-based chip including the source of the design expresse n Verilog, a verification suite and simulation models, instruction se rchitecture specification (UltraSPARC Architecture 2005) and a Solari S port.
-- Try It Before You Buy It -- Given the high level of interest in thes ew breakthrough systems, Sun is now offering the industry's largest
"Try and Buy" program that enables customers and ISV partners to tes ut a new Sun Fire T1000 or T2000 server running the highly threade ltraSPARC T1 processor free of charge for 90 days, with the option t urchase the system at the end. For more information, please go to:
http://www.sun.com/emrkt/trycoolthreads.
-- Space, Wattage and Performance (SWaP) Metric -- Sun is also announcin n important new metric for customers to use as they evaluate thei atacenter efficiencies and systems performance. It is the big pictur or datacenter managers -- it measures Space, Wattage and Performance
(SWaP). The new SWaP metric is the only true measure o ndustry-standard server efficiency: performance / (space x power).
-- Full Protection Plans -- Sun also announced two new Full Protectio lans, integrated system and services programs that offer customers lo otal cost of ownership, reduced budgetary risk and increased syste vailability. When customers choose the Sun Fire T1000 or T2000 system,
they get more than just a server; they receive the world's mos owerful operating system, Solaris 10, and the option to purchase ull Protection Plan that goes far beyond basic break/fix warrant rograms. Sun's Full Protection Plans are simple to purchase, includ he essential, recommended services and offer transparent three-yea ricing that enables customers to predict and better manage their I udgets.
-- CoolThreads Prize For Innovation -- Sun launched its CoolThread ompetition to inspire new software development for its breakthroug un Fire T1000 and T2000 server line. In this competition, developer nd ISVs have the opportunity to win $50,000 in cash by developin round-breaking applications or improving on existing applications,
within the next six months, for optimal throughput performance an caling. For further details about the CoolThreads Developer Contes nd full contest rules, please visit https://coolthreads.dev.java.net .
-- Sun N1(TM) System Management software -- Sun N1 System Manager v1.2 no ncludes support for the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers. Thi ntegrated solution allows customers to perform operating syste rovisioning and system management of the Sun Fire servers announce oday and Sun's x64 industry-standard systems announced in September.
Sun Management Console 3.6 adds support for several Solaris 10 feature ncluding Dynamic Tracing, Predictive Self-Healing and Solari ontainers. The Sun N1 Management portfolio includes Sun N1 Syste anager, Sun Management Center, N1 Service Provisioning System and th un N1 Grid Engine. These products help enterprises lower operationa osts and improve business efficiency by simplifying the management o ystems 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 mak he Java(TM) Enterprise System, Sun N1 Management software and Su tudio Developer tools available at no cost for both development an eployment. All of this software, along with the Solaris OS, will b ntegrated into the Solaris Enterprise System making it the onl omprehensive and open infrastructure software platform availabl oday.
-- Solaris 10 Operating System -- On Nov. 17, Sun expanded its commitmen o delivering and supporting powerful open source solutions for th nterprise and announced: that it will distribute and support th ostgres database with the Solaris OS; new features in OpenSolari ncluding Solaris Containers for Linux Applications; availability o he source code for Solaris ZFS, a revolutionary new 128-bit fil ystem with unprecedented error detection and correction capabilitie nd participation in the Xen open source project. Solaris 10, the mos dvanced operating system on the planet, is available for bot ltraSPARC and industry standard x86/x64 systems. The Solaris OS is th nly operating system that guarantees binary compatibility on supporte latforms and source code compatibility between UltraSPARC and x64
platforms ensuring that applications written for Sun's UltraSPAR latform run unmodified on Sun's new Sun Fire systems. The Solaris 10
OS includes innovative features not available on other platforms, suc s DTrace, Predictive Self Healing and Containers, to provide th ighest levels of application performance, availability, security an onsolidation.
-- Sun Summit on 21st Century Eco-Responsibility -- On Nov. 14 at it irst ever Sun Summit on 21st Century Eco-Responsibility, Sun discusse ow its approach to eco-responsible computing is good for the I ndustry and detailed how it is marrying eco-friendly product desig ith high performance technologies. Sun's McNealy was joined by Sun CT reg Papadopoulos and a panel of environmental thought leaders t iscuss how eco-responsibility can minimize harm to the planet an enefit 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 Su ntroduced the UltraSPARC T1, code named "Niagara", as the world' irst high-performance, energy-efficient processor. Using patente oolThreads chip multi-threading technology that leverages the threade ature of the Solaris 10 OS, the breakthrough chip is the world's firs co-responsible processor. In an era in which most processors use a east 40 watts/thread, each SPARC-based CoolThreads processor uses fiv ercent the energy per thread of Intel Xeon or IBM Power processors a ust two watts per thread. Sun's new processor offers unparallele ransactional throughput and is designed to save customers millions o ollars on rising datacenter power, cooling and space costs.
-- Storage Titanium Tape Drive T10000 -- On Nov. 3, Sun introduced th 10000 enterprise tape drive, extending the value and performanc elivered via StorageTek's earlier T-Series drives, to provid usinesses with fast access to large volumes of information at a ttractive price per gigabyte. Delivering the industry's highest nativ ape drive throughput rate (120 megabytes/second), capacity of up to
500 gigabytes uncompressed -- or a terabyte of compressed data on ingle cartridge -- and Fibre Channel and FICON dual-port connectivity,
the T10000 delivers a 250 percent increase in density and 400 percen ncrease in throughput speeds over the earlier StorageTek T9940B drive.
-- Developer Community -- On Oct. 26, Sun launched its latest release o un(TM) Studio 11 with enhancements designed to simplify th evelopment process and deliver the highest optimization and bes erformance for the development of scalable 32-bit and 64-bi pplications on multi-core and multi-threaded systems. This results i n increase in developer productivity while requiring less hardware,
electricity and footprint when deploying these demanding application nto production. Sun Studio software has contributed to 13 performanc orld records announced in 2005, with five recorded on this lates roduct release.
-- UltraSPARC IV+ Processor -- On Sept. 20, Sun announced the release o un Fire servers powered by new UltraSPARC IV+ processors. The ne ystems offer customers up to a fivefold increase in performance ove revious UltraSPARC processor generations. These recently announce ystems deliver the industry's only "on the fly" upgrade path tha llows customers to protect their investments in existing application nd infrastructure by leveraging the binary compatibility of th ltraSPARC processor and the Solaris OS to quickly and easily tak dvantage 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 http://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 http://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 http://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: prnewswire
All trademarks and copyrighted information contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
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