Sun Microsystems is known for innovation, and 2005 was truly a banner year. We ended the year with a bang in December at our quarterly Network Computing launch for Q4 2005 (NC05Q4) by announcing the coolest servers on the planet — literally.

To run fast, most servers run hot. Data center managers are being forced to upgrade their electrical systems and their air-conditioning systems, while watching their utility bills increase as much as fivefold over the past three years.

The new Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers with CoolThreads technology stay cool. These servers, the first to use the new eight-core, 32-thread UltraSPARC T1 processor, essentially pack a rack of 32 servers on a single chip.

Ideal as Web- and app-tier platforms, these systems fit into a single rack unit (1RU) of space and consume just 350 watts of electricity, delivering up to five times the throughput of competing systems, while using as little as one-fifth the energy.

Earlier in 2005, Sun set a new standard for industry-standard servers with our latest Sun Fire x64 servers — faster, smaller, and more energy-efficient than any other servers using the standard x86/x64 microprocessor architecture. These servers excel in scientific applications where floating-point performance is essential.

With these eco-responsible servers, customers will be able to reduce the number of servers they need by as much as four to one — and save millions of dollars on power, cooling, and space.

Education and research customers are eligible for promotional pricing on selected configurations of the Sun Fire T2000 server. Sun and Oracle are also offering customers a special opportunity to try Oracle on Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 systems. As part of a special promotion, customers using Oracle products with CPU-based licenses on Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 systems will be able to count cores as .25 percent of a processor versus alternative methods.

Using the Sun Sim Datacenter Web tool, you can simulate your own data center and see the power saving and performance increase using the new Sun Fire T2000 server.

Recognizing today's data center issues, Sun has defined a new metric for evaluating servers — a benchmark that places space and power use alongside performance. We call it SWaP (Space, Watts, and Performance). This metric assesses the efficiency and effectiveness of rack-optimized server deployments in a data center. The formula Sun developed, SWaP = performance / (space x power), is a simple calculation that allows any customer to run the metric and use the results to compare systems from different vendors.

Sun launched the CoolThreads Prize For Innovation 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 groundbreaking applications or improving on existing applications, within the next six months, for optimal throughput performance and scaling.

On Dec. 6, Scott McNealy announced that the UltraSPARC T1 chip will become an open source chip. In short, this means that the specification, the RTL code, simulation models, and a verification suite for the UltraSPARC T1 processor will be published at www.opensparc.net. This community site is open to anyone: students, EDA vendors and users, developers, foundries, and tools providers. Join the conversation and help drive innovation!

2005 was certainly a busy year for Sun. In addition to the above announcements, we launched: the Student Developer Program, the Global Education and Learning Community, Solaris 10, OpenSolaris, UltraSPARC IV+, Sun Secure Global Desktop Software, StarOffice 8, and more. And you can expect to see more innovation from us in 2006. I wish you a happy, healthy and productive New Year.

Sincerely yours,