Sun Microsystems Blows Away Industry Standards for Performance With World Record-Setting New Sun Fire T1000, T2000 Servers and CoolThreads Technology

Sun Network Computing 2005 Q4 (NC05Q4) -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced the availability of the Sun Fire(TM) T1000 and T2000 servers featuring patented CoolThreads(TM) technology, the industry's first eight core, 32-thread processor that packs the performance of a rack of servers onto a single chip. Based on the 9.6 GHz UltraSPARC(R) T1(TM) processor, code named Niagara, the new server family has achieved seven world-record benchmarks and is setting a new industry standard for performance, energy and space efficiency with as little as half the power and space of competing systems.

The massively-threaded new servers allow customers to take advantage of the new CoolThreads technology without having to rewrite applications. The new systems are also the first servers designed from the ground up for Internet workloads and for running current and next-generation web, application and distributed database systems. Sun guarantees binary compatibility on the Solaris(TM) Operating System (OS) across all supported systems including the new Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers with CoolThreads technology. This ensures that software written for the Solaris 10 OS will run unmodified on all supported UltraSPARC systems. As the result of more than 10 years of experience with massively multi-threaded systems, Solaris 10 is the ideal OS for systems based on multi-core chips.

"Sun has once again leapfrogged the competition, establishing a five year lead over any other processor architecture in the world," said Jonathan Schwartz, president and COO, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "We're delivering the world's most energy efficient computers and proving we can connect the planet without torching it or killing off economic opportunity."

In addition, Sun is actively working with the open source community to bring Linux and FreeBSD to the UltraSPARC T1 'Niagara' platform. By open sourcing the UltraSPARC T1 code, Sun is removing the barriers to adoption and opening the innovation of the UltraSPARC T1 platform to other applications, systems designers and operating systems. (See related announcement "Sun Microsystems Launches OpenSPARC Project - Ignites New Open Source Community for Breakthrough UltraSPARC T1 Processor" for additional details.)

The new Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 systems start at $2,995 U.S. list, priced at or below "industry-standard" servers from IBM, HP or Dell. The Sun Fire T1000 is a 1U, 19-inch deep server designed for web and network infrastructures. The Sun Fire T2000 is a 2U, 24.3-inch deep server with extensive internal redundancy capabilities to offer maximum uptime for application services and web-tier consolidation projects. The Sun Fire T2000 ships six or eight processor cores while the Sun Fire T2000 ships with four, six or eight processor cores. Both ship with up to 32 threads -- an industry first -- each core is able to handle four "threads." The nucleus of these new systems is the UltraSPARC T1 processor. Its eight cores and massively-threaded design has been developed over the past three years and is significantly more advanced than competing Intel Xeon or IBM POWER processors.

The Right Solution for Today's Maxed-Out Datacenters

According to an IDC Insight, by 2009, more than 14 million servers will be installed in the U.S., an increase of more than 50 percent above current levels (Source, IDC, "Server Power Consumption Reemerges as a Critical Cost Factor in Datacenters," Doc #33937, August 2005). In addition, rising energy costs and datacenter sprawl have left thousands of customers with overloaded racks of underutilized, energy-hogging Intel Xeon servers.

"The continued build-out of the Internet has resulted in massive, inefficient server farms that run too hot and take up too much space," said David Yen, executive vice president, Scalable Systems Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Given the extreme performance increase and low power consumption of our new Sun Fire servers, any company that has a web, application or database server farm based on Intel Xeon servers needs to test the Sun Fire T1000 or T2000 servers immediately and see the unmatched price/performance and energy savings for themselves."

Customers Find Big Performance Boost Without Power Crunch Compromise

Over 100 customers have beta tested Sun's new systems over the past six months with staggering results in performance and efficiency. New CoolThreads technology could enable Air France, EDS, Fiducia and other customers to reduce the number of servers in their datacenters by as much as 75 percent.

"We are ecstatic with the cost, throughput performance and power economics of the Sun Fire T2000 servers," said Larry Lozon, vice-president of datacenter services, EDS. "As you can imagine, reducing power consumption in our data centers is crucial. During our initial testing, we experienced a 50 percent decrease in server power consumption. These 32-way server on a chip systems will be a major component within our Infrastructure Transformation offering, providing an ideal landing zone for platform re-hosting and technology refresh of high throughput workloads. This will lay the foundation for a tech refresh strategy focused on improving application performance while reducing space and power consumption. We have been so impressed with all of our findings that we are currently underway with plans of our own to migrate our internal website onto T2000s, which will enable us to be more eco-responsible as well."

Sun Beats IBM, HP and Dell in Seven Industry Standard Benchmarks

The CoolThreads servers set seven world records for performance and price/performance, as demonstrated by a wide variety of industry standard application benchmarks. Sun also powered past Dell and HP on several industry standard benchmarks (see footnotes for more details):

-- Sun Fire T2000 server using Sun's Web Server 6.1 SP5 achieved a worl ecord SPECweb2005 and demonstrated a 1.7x performance advantage ove he 4-way IBM eServer p5 550 with 4.3x higher performance per wat hile occupying half the space. In addition, the Sun Fire T2000

delivers more than 3x the performance of the 2-way 3.8GHz Xeon-base BM eServer xSeries x346 while delivering 4.1X higher performance pe att.(1)

-- Sun Fire T2000 server using BEA WebLogic Server was 1.3X faster tha he performance of a 4-way 1.6GHz Itanium2-based HP rx4600 server o he dual node SPECjAppServer2004. The Sun Fire T2000 achieved th verall performance world record on all two node results.(2)

-- Sun Fire T2000 server using Sun Java(TM) System Application Server 8.2

Performance Edition (AS 8.2 PE) achieved world record price/performanc n the application tier beating a 4-way 1.6GHz Itanium2-based HP rx4600

server on the dual node SPECjAppServer2004. Sun Java System AS 8.2PE i ree for development and deployment.

-- Sun Fire T2000 server, equipped with the UltraSPARC T1 processo chieved overall price/performance leadership on the Lotus R6iNote omino 7 benchmark. On IBM's own benchmark the Sun Fire T2000 beats th rice/performance of the POWER5+ based IBM p5 p550Q by 27 percent. I ddition, Sun has more than twice the price/performance advantage and ine percent performance advantage over the POWER5 based IBM p5 570

server.(3)

-- In a demonstration addressing the all-important and ubiquitous porta erver workload, the Sun Fire T2000 server beats the performance of the

2GHz Xeon-based Dell 6650 server by running on the new Sun Java Syste ortal Server 7, with 6x more logins per second while providing 33

percent capacity headroom on Sun Fire T2000 Server versus zero percen n Dell. This new release of the Sun Java System Portal Server allow sers to easily create interactive communities of users and services,

building "community" portals populated with collaborative conten ncluding RSS feeds, Blogs and Wikis. Additional information on the Su ava System Portal Server 7 will be communicated in the coming days.

-- Sun Fire T1000 beats the performance of the Dell SC1425 by over 2x,

while consuming half the power. In comparison to the IBM p520 2-wa ower 5+ server, the Sun Fire T1000 server delivered 1.5x highe erformance in 4x less space and at 3.7x superior performance per watt.

-- Sun Fire T2000 server beats the performance of the 1.9GHz POWER5+ base BM p5 550 4-way on the SPECjbb2005 and was more than 1.6x faster tha he 2.8GHz dual-core IBM x346.(4) Surprisingly, HP and Fujitsu hav ot published results on this important new benchmark that demonstrate ava server performance.

Try It Before You Buy It

Given the high level of interest in these new breakthrough systems, Sun is now offering the industry's largest "Try and Buy" program that enables customers and ISV partners to test out a new Sun Fire T1000 or T2000 server running the highly threaded UltraSPARC T1 processor free of charge for 60 days, with the option to purchase the system. For more information, please go to: http://www.sun.com/emrkt/trycoolthreads.

Industry's Largest Full Protection Plan

Today, Sun also announced its new Full Protection Plan, an integrated system and services program that offers customers lower total cost of ownership, reduced budgetary risk and increased system availability. When customers choose the Sun Fire T1000 or T2000 systems with a Full Protection Plan, they get more than just a server, they receive the world's most advanced operating system, Solaris 10, and a Full Protection Plan that goes far beyond basic break/fix warranty programs. Sun's Full Protection Plan is simple to purchase, includes the essential, recommended services and offers transparent three-year pricing that enables customers to predict and better manage their IT budgets over three years.

Energy Efficient CoolThreads Servers Replace Power Hungry Intel Xeon Servers

For customers looking to transition away from power-hungry Intel Xeon platforms, Sun is offering a Web-Tier Consolidation Program that allows for easy consolidation onto Sun's new CoolThreads Sun Fire servers. Sun uses the proven program to work with customers to design a consolidated architecture and drive hard savings in power, cooling and facilities costs. To get started, simply go to: sun.com/webtierconsolidation/.

The new Web-Tier Consolidation Program allows customers to:

-- Reduce power and space requirements as much as 95 percent b onsolidating web infrastructure to Sun Fire CoolThreads servers;

-- Consolidate up to 10 Xeon servers with just one Sun Fire CoolThread erver;

-- Deliver more secure and more agile web services;

-- Run multiple web applications on one Sun system with Solaris 10

Containers, reducing the complexity of managing hundreds of thousand f applications, multiple servers and multiple operating systems;

-- Take advantage of the most extensive set of built-in security feature nd the fastest networking stack on any operating system availabl oday for delivering mission-critical web applications.

System Availability and Pricing

The new Sun Fire T2000 server is available immediately. The Sun Fire T1000 can be ordered now for delivery in March 2006. Sun Fire T1000 prices begin at $2,995 U.S. list when a System Ready Plan is purchased with the server. Sun Fire T2000 prices begin at $7,795 U.S. list when a System Ready Plan is purchased with the server.

For more information related to all of Sun's NC05Q4 announcements, as well as those above, go to Sun's online press kit at http://www.sun.com/presskits/networkcomputing05q4/ .

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:

Alex Plant

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

415-786-3451

alex.plant@sun.com

650-786-7737

allpress@sun.com

NOTE: SPEC, SPECweb, SPECjbb, SPECjAppServer reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.

(1) Sun Fire T2000 (8 cores, 1 chip) 14001 SPECweb2005. IBM eServer p5 550 (4 cores, 2 chips) 7881 SPECweb2005. IBM eServer Xseries x346 (2 cores, 2 chips) 4348 SPECweb2005. Results from http://www.spec.org as of 12/2/05.

(2) SPECjAppServer2004 Sun Fire T2000 with BEA (8 cores, 1 chip) 615.64 JOPS@Standard, HP rx4600 (4 cores, 4 chip) 471.28 JOPS@Standard, Sun Fire T2000 with SJSAS (8 cores, 1 chip) 436.71 JOPS@Standard. Results from http://www.spec.org as of 12/02/2005. Application price/performance includes hardware & software costs for the application server tier, which is then divided by the JOPS. It is not an official SPEC metric, but is allowed by SPEC rules. Calculations are made based on the bill of materials supplied with the benchmark result.

(3) NotesBench R6iNotes Sun Fire T2000 (1x1200 MHz Niagara, 32GB), 4 partitions, Solaris[TM] 10, Lotus[R] Domino 7.0, 19,000 users, $4.35 per user, 16,061 NotesMark tpm, 400 ms avg rt.; 8-way (8-core) IBM System p5 550Q (1.5 GHz), 4 partitions, AIX 5L V5.3, Lotus Domino 7.0, 24,000 R6iNotes users, $5.97 Price per User, 20,108 NotesMark, 932ms avg rt; 8-way (8-core) IBM System p5 570 (1.5 GHz), 4 partitions, AIX 5L V5.3,Lotus Domino 6.5.3, 17,400 R6iNotes users, $10.19 Price per User, 14,740 NotesMark, 270ms avg RT;Comparison of mid-range $/perf. More info http://www.notesbench.org

(4) SPECjbb2005 Sun Fire T2000 (8 cores, 1 chip) 63,378 bops submitted, IBM eServer p5 550 (2 chips, 4 cores, 4-way) 61,789 bops, Dell PowerEdge SC1425 (2 chips, 2 cores, 2-way) 24,208 bops. Results as of 12/2/05 on http://www.spec.org.

NOTE: Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, Java, Sun Fire, CoolThreads, T1 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 United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Safe Harbor

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding Sun's beliefs and expectations regarding the shipping schedule for its 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.

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