Sun Microsystems Delivers Three-in-One Punch

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced new world-record benchmarks for its industry-standard Sun Fire(TM) X4100 and X4200 servers, including new world records on the Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System (OS) and Windows. Additionally, the company announced that it has already shipped tens of thousands of "Galaxy" Sun Fire X4100 and Sun Fire X4200 servers based on Single- and Dual-Core AMD Opteron(TM) processors to hundreds of customers since the servers were announced last September.

"We're not at all surprised by the extremely high demand we've seen with our Sun Fire x64 servers, especially Galaxy," said Graham Lovell, senior director of x64 servers, Network Systems Group, Sun Microsystems. "Unit shipments of Sun Fire x64 servers, powered by AMD Opteron processors, were up 87 percent in our second quarter, signifying that customers are seriously considering our performance, power and cost advantages over the competition. Our new world-record benchmarks and price cuts will make our servers that much more attractive than competitive offerings." Sun Fire x64 Servers Set New World Records

Sun Fire X4100 and Sun Fire X4200 servers, powered by Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors with Direct Connect Architecture, set three new x86 world records on SPECjbb2005 benchmark (bops/JVM) with the following operating systems: Solaris 10, Microsoft Windows 2003 Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. The benchmark emulates the design of real-world server-side Java(TM) applications and provides an accurate reflection of the business logic and objects, while stressing the implementation of the Java(TM) Virtual Machine (JVM) and the scalability of the system's processors and memory.

Since the benchmark stresses overall JVM performance, it was used to demonstrate that Java HotSpot(TM) Server Virtual Machine, version J2SE 5.0_06 can deliver outstanding results and optimized performance, regardless of the underlying OS. Specific highlights of the results include: -- The Sun Fire X4200 SPECjbb2005 result beat the Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX300 server by 17% and is more than 24% faster than the IBM xSeries eServer 346. Both competing systems were outfitted with the dual-core 2.8 GHz Xeon DP processors.

-- The Sun Fire X4200 SPECjbb2005 result beat the nearest Windows result by more than 6%.

-- Industry first SPECjbb2005 submission under the widely used Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS. Additionally, the 16-processor cluster based on Sun Fire X2100 servers, each outfitted with AMD Opteron processor Model 152 and the Cisco Infiniband (IB) PCI-Express adapter, outperforms all results published by other hardware vendors on EXA PowerFLOW benchmark. EXA's PowerFLOW CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) application is an MCAE application used by the major engineering companies in a variety of disciplines such as aerospace, automotive and chemical. The EXA PowerFLOW benchmark consists of two compute and memory intensive suites with small and large data sets. In both cases, the cost-effective solution based on high-performance single-processor Sun Fire X2100 servers is superior to all other results, including Itanium2 and POWER5-based submissions, by a significant margin, setting a new World Record for the clusters of this size. Specifically: -- The cluster based on 16 Sun Fire X2100 servers is over 48% faster than HP DL140-based cluster with 16 Intel Xeon EM64T processors and IB interconnect.

-- Sun's solution is up to 24% faster then HP DL 145-based cluster equipped with 16 AMD Opteron processors and Myrinet interconnect. Additional information on the Sun Fire x64 benchmarks can be found at: http://www.sun.com/x64/benchmarks/ . Sun Drops Prices on Enterprise-Class Sun Fire x64 Servers

In an aggressive move against servers based on Intel Xeon processors, Sun announced price reductions of up to 37% on standard configurations of the AMD Opteron processor-based Sun Fire X2100, Sun Fire X4100, Sun Fire X4200 and Sun Fire V40z servers. For more information on Sun Fire x64 servers, including pricing and availability, please visit: http://www.sun.com/x64 . About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

A singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- 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 http://sun.com . NOTE: Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Sun Fire, Solaris, Java, JVM, Java HotSpot and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. The terms "Java Virtual Machine" and "JVM" mean a Virtual Machine for the Java(TM) platform. AMD and AMD Opteron are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. SPEC, SPECjbb registered trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.

Results as of 02/02/06 on http://www.spec.org. Sun Fire X4200 (2x Opteron Model 285SE, 4 cores, 4 HW threads): SPECjbb2005 - 49,097 bops, 49,097 bops/JVM, Solaris 10; SPECjbb2005 - 47,437 bops, 47,437 bops/JVM, Windows Server 2003; SPECjbb2005 - 43,076 bops, 43,076 bops/JVM, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. The results were measured on Sun Fire X4200. Sun Fire X4100 and Sun Fire X4200 are electronically equivalent. Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX300 S2 (2x Intel Xeon 2.80 GHz, 4 cores, HT threads), Java HotSpot Server VM (build 1.5.0_06-b05): SPECjbb2005 - 41,986 bops, 41,986 bops/JVM, Windows Server 2003. IBM eServer xSeries 346 (2x Intel Xeon 2.80 GHz, 4 cores, HT threads): SPECjbb2005 - 39,585 bops, 39,585 bops/JVM, Windows Server 2003. FOR MORE INFORMATION: Rebekah Johnson

650-585-5473

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

rebekah.johnson@sun.com Megan Patterson

Bite Communications for Sun Microsystems, Inc.

415-365-0358

megan.patterson@bitepr.com