Sun Announces Availability of x64 Servers and Workstations Powered by Fastest AMD Opteron Processors

Sun Fire x64 Servers and Sun Ultra x64 Workstations, Boosted by Solaris 10 and Sun Studio 11, Deliver 16 New World Records

SANTA CLARA, Calif. April 11, 2006 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced the availability of Sun Fire x64 (x86, 64-bit) servers and Sun Ultra Workstations powered by the newest, highest-performing single-core AMD Opteron Model 156, 256 and 856 processors. The faster processor speeds, combined with the inherent performance advantages of Sun's x64 servers and workstations, give customers increased processing power and a performance edge over competitive systems.

"Sun is the first vendor to take full performance advantage of all the new single-core AMD Opteron processors," said Lisa Sieker, vice president of marketing, Network Systems Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Sun's partnership with AMD for more than two years has helped us to develop fast, innovative products that bring flexible computing solutions to the x64 market. The availability of Sun's x64 servers and workstations powered by the newest AMD Opteron x56 processors, including the only products on the market with the AMD Opteron Model 156 processor, emphasizes the alignment of our product roadmaps, in addition to our mutual commitment to provide the fastest and most power-efficient x64 solutions in the industry."

"Collaborating with leading organizations such as Sun to develop innovative solutions for customers is very important to AMD and critical to our company's success," said Randy Allen, Corporate Vice President, Server and Workstation Division, AMD. "Today's announcement is further testament to our joint commitment with Sun to provide technology that addresses today's key issues including energy efficiency, reliability and performance head-on. Sun's x64 servers and workstations powered by AMD Opteron processors help solve our customers' need for more efficient solutions in their datacenters."

Sun Fire Servers and Workstations Powered by AMD x56 Opteron Processors Set 16 World-Record Benchmarks

In addition to more than 70 world record results posted to date, the Sun Fire x64 systems, powered by the latest single-core AMD Opteron processors, have established 16 new performance records. Sun Fire x64 servers upheld eight world records across the product line, while running the array of supported Operating Systems (OS) that include Solaris, SUSE and Red Hat Linux, and Windows. Notably, the combination of the Solaris 10 OS and Sun Studio 11 software produced three World Records on SPEC CPU 2000 benchmark:

• The Sun Fire V40z server has the best result for all 4-CPU x86 systems on SPECfp_rate2000 and effectively doubles the performance of the Dell PowerEdge 6850, equipped with 4 Intel Xeon processors(1).
• The Sun Fire X4100 and Sun Fire X4200 servers beat all other 2-CPU x86 servers on SPECfp_rate2000, easily trumping the performance of the HP ProLiant DL360 G4p, by 72%(2).
• The Sun Fire X2100 server is the fastest single socket x86 system on SPECfp2000, faster than the IBM eServer xSeries 306m server, that uses Intel Pentium CPU, by over 15%(3).

Based on real-world applications, the SPEC CPU2000 suite measures the performance of the processor, memory and compiler on the tested system, effectively providing a comparative measure of compiler and OS performance, when executed on identical hardware. The above results were obtained using the Solaris 10 OS and surpass those captured under SUSE Linux, thus demonstrating the true capabilities of Sun's software.

The Sun Ultra 20 Workstation and the newest Sun Ultra 40 Workstation, using AMD Opteron processors Model 156 and 256 respectively, add another eight world records to the already extensive list of ground-breaking benchmarks. The highlights include:

• World Record on SPEC APC Pro/Engineer Wildfire 2.0 Benchmark
  This updated benchmark, tailored to the popular CAD/CAM/CAE application, now supports 64-bit operating systems and uses a complex model of a race car assembly to exercise graphics, CPU and I/O areas of system performance. The Sun Ultra 20 Workstation, outfitted with an NVIDIA Quadro FX 3450 graphics card and running Windows XP, stands out by beating the nearest competitor, the HP xw9300 workstation, by 11%(4).
• World Record on SPECint2000 Benchmark
  The Sun Ultra 40 workstation, running SUSE Linux, beats the closest competing workstation from Dell by 10%, demonstrating top performance on the integer-heavy part of the SPEC CPU 2000 benchmark(5).

More information on the Sun x64 server and workstation benchmarks can be found at: http://www.sun.com/x64/benchmarks/

More information on the Sun x64 servers and workstations can be found at: 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.

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