SANTA CLARA, Calif., November 15, 2004 - At its Network Computing '04Q4 (NC04Q4) launch today, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) announced that the best selling 4-way UNIX(R) server in the industry, the Sun Fire(TM) V440, just got better thanks to the new 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC(R) IIIi processor running the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS). Additionally, Sun today previewed the radical new Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology used in its Niagara processor design, due to hit the market in 2006, with 32 high-performance threads on a single piece of silicon.

"The key to unlocking the potential of Sun's new Niagara processor-based systems will be the ability to manage the highly threaded environment using Solaris," said Kevin Krewell, senior analyst for Microprocessor Report. "Here, Sun has a significant advantage over the open-source Linux operating system. Niagara pushes the envelope of highly threaded yet power efficient server systems."

"Solaris 10 will dramatically increase the performance of our existing and future UltraSPARC systems," said David Yen, executive vice president, scalable systems group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "From the current design of our UltraSPARC IIIi-based systems all the way to the radical architecture of the Niagara processor, Sun is completely rethinking how systems are architected in order to provide the best application throughput in the most dense and lowest power form factor in the industry."

Solaris 10 Makes UltraSPARC Faster

The industry leading innovation in the Solaris 10 OS will allow Sun's existing UltraSPARC system customers to dramatically improve server performance without changing their hardware environment. For example, according to internal benchmarks, customers who upgrade to the Solaris 10 OS on their UltraSPARC systems can benefit from a 47 to 73 percent increase in Web Server performance from the Solaris 9 and Solaris 8 OS, respectively.

Additionally, the new features in Solaris 10 have been optimized for UltraSPARC IV and UltraSPARC IIIi-based systems to further increase system speed, efficiency and overall throughput. Starting at under $12,000 (USD), the new Sun Fire V440, running the Solaris 10 OS, is setting the standard for single threaded application performance:

• Sun Fire V440 record breaking price-performance on Solaris 10: Running Solaris 10 and operating at 1.6 GHz, Sun's best selling UltraSPARC IIIi Sun Fire V440 server achieved world record price-performance among all TPC-H@100GB submissions(2). This is a price/performance improvement of more than 32 percent over the previous V440 submission(3). At $54,276.55 (USD), the Sun Fire V440 server offers the lowest total cost of ownership of any 4-way submission at 100GB by 15 percent. In second place is the 1.28GHz Sun Fire V440 at $67,704 (USD) (3).

Early results are also demonstrating significant performance enhancements for the Solaris 10 OS running on Sun's dual-core UltraSPARC IV-based systems:

• Sun Fire V490 leads the data warehouse pack with Solaris 10: The 4-way Sun Fire V490 server achieved world record price/performance running Solaris 10 on the 1-TB TPC-H benchmark, demonstrating the highest performance data warehousing and database architecture at this price point. The Sun Fire V490 server delivered 2,958 QphH@1000GB at a price performance of US$52/QphH@1000GB. (1)

(1)The Sun Fire V490 system delivered 2,959��QphH@1000GB at a price performance of 52 US$/QphH @1000GB with a scheduled availability date of 1/16/05.
(2)The Sun Fire 1.593GHz V440 system delivered 2,882 QphH@100GB at a price performance of 19 US$/QphH @100GB with a scheduled general availability date of 11/16/04.
(3)The Sun Fire 1.28GHz V440 system delivered 2428 QphH@100GB at a price performance of 28 US$/QphH @100GB with availability on 11/07/03.
(4) The HP ProLiant DL 760 G2 8P system delivered 4224 QphH@100GB at a price performance of 43 US$/QphH @100GB with a scheduled availability date of 8/15/03.
TPC-H, QphH and $/QphH are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). Additional information on the TPC-H benchmark can be found at www.tpc.org

Tune into Sun's NC04Q4 web event at www.sun.com/nc and visit our online press kit (http://sun.com/presskits/networkcomputing04q4/) to view all press releases and detailed product launch background.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, Solaris, Sun Fire and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.