Sun's Hottest Systems Now Under $10,000; Ultra Workstation Popularity Spawns Price Cuts up to 30%, New Models and No. 1 Graphics Benchmarks.MENLO PARK Menlo Park. 1 Residential city (1990 pop. 28,040), San Mateo co., W Calif.; inc. 1874. Electronic equipment and aerospace products are manufactured in the city. Menlo College and a Stanford Univ. research institute are there. 2 Uninc. , Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 23, 1996--Sun Microsystems Computer Company announced today a new Ultra(TM) 1 workstation that offers users supercomputer performance for only $9,995. The tremendous popularity of Ultra(TM) workstations, Sun's ability to ship systems in volume, and the ever-increasing customer acceptance of Sun's technical computing commitment allow Sun to offer reduced prices on the Ultra 1 family of workstations. Users can purchase the Ultra 1, a price/performance leader for entry users and experience the benefits of UltraComputing(TM), Sun's new architecture that redefines the technical desktop paradigm, for under $10,000. In addition to strengthening its workstation price/performance leadership, Sun introduced new uniprocessor configurations of its Ultra 2 workstation family that can be easily upgraded to multiprocessor (MP) systems. Further, as part of the UltraComputing experience, customers can now enjoy stellar graphics performance as demonstrated by recent graphics benchmark results 33 percent better than HP's C100 Visualize 48. The Ultra workstation family set the industry on its ear last November when it offered not only a faster microprocessor, but also an advanced supercomputer-type system architecture on the desktop. Ideal for markets such as EDA (1) (Electronic Design Automation) Using the computer to design, lay out, verify and simulate the performance of electronic circuits on a chip or printed circuit board. , MCAD MCAD Microsoft Certified Application Developer MCAD Mechanical Computer Aided Design MCAD Medium-Chain Acyl-CoA Dehydrogenase (inherited metabolic disease) MCAD Minneapolis College of Art and Design , Oil/Gas and Finance, the Ultra family has been the platform of choice for the technical and scientific community since its launch in November 1995. In fact, Dataquest ranks Sun the leader with 30.4 percent of the UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). (R) revenue market share in 1995. "The new entry-level and MP Ultra systems are designed to take this radically new architecture to a broader set of users and applications," said Gene Banman, vice president and general manager of Sun's Desktop Products Group. "For the price-sensitive customer the uniprocessor models offer outstanding performance at a low price, and the MP models offer the speed that power-hungry, compute-intensive technical workstation users have come to expect from Sun." THE SOLUTION FOR THE NETWORK AGE: ULTRACOMPUTING By offering UltraComputing at less than $10,000, Sun has once again shattered the perception of what a power-user workstation costs. The Ultra product family continues to be the most advanced workstation in the industry, with an architecture that goes beyond mere chip speed as a method to increase application performance. UltraComputing, the foundation of Sun's new line, integrates a new system interconnect, boosted graphics performance level, FastEthernet networking and screaming visual computing The use of computers for 3D modeling and animation. See visualization. capabilities. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Dataquest, this marks the fifth straight year that Sun achieved the top spot in the UNIX technical computing market. Dataquest numbers go on to show that Sun outdistances the competition as the market leader in several key markets such as EDA with 57 percent market share, followed by H-P with only 31.3 percent. NEW UPGRADABLE ULTRA 2 MODELS The new uniprocessor Ultra 2 Model 1170 (SPECint95 6.20, SPECfp95 9.27) comes with a 167 MHz (MegaHertZ) One million cycles per second. It is used to measure the transmission speed of electronic devices, including channels, buses and the computer's internal clock. A one-megahertz clock (1 MHz) means some number of bits (16, 32, 64, etc. UltraSPARC chip, while the Model 1200 (SPECint95 7.67, SPECfp95 11.1) features a 200 MHz UltraSPARC chip. Both systems can be upgraded to two-way MP systems simply by adding another CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. module. Ideal applications include fluid dynamics fluid dynamics n. (used with a sing. verb) The branch of applied science that is concerned with the movement of gases and liquids. , high-end animation, simulation, and financial portfolio analysis. Sun also added the multiprocessing Ultra 2 model 2170 (SPECint95 6.39, SPECfp95 11.8), which features dual 167 MHz processors, and reduced the price of its Model 2200 dual-CPU 200 MHz Ultra 2 system (SPECint95 7.88, SPECfp95 14.7) announced in November. ULTRA SYSTEM'S GRAPHICS PERFORMANCE IS UNPARALLELED In addition to raw performance, the Ultra systems weigh out particularly well in PLBsurf93 (solids modeling) graphics price/performance benchmarks. In a measure of how much graphics performance per dollar of investment the machines provided, the Ultra 1 Creator 3D provided significantly better solids modeling performance than the HP C100 Visualize 48, the DEC 500/333 4D20, and the IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) 3AT GXT GXT Graded Exercise Testing (cardiac testing) 1000 2AG. In head-to-head PLBsurf93 benchmarks, the Ultra 1 Creator system delivered 141 $/PLBsurf compared to 188 $/PLBsurf for HP; 212 $/PLBsurf for DEC; and 246 $/PLBsurf for IBM. NEW ULTRA PRICING; SYSTEM AVAILABILITY The new Ultra 1 Model 140, a price/performance leader for entry users (SPECint95 4.66, SPECfp95 7.90), has a 143 MHz UltraSPARC processor, 32 megabytes of memory, a 1.05 gigabyte disk, 17-inch display and TurboGX(TM) graphics and is priced at $9,995 (US, Quantity 1). This price is fully discountable under Sun's normal discount schedule, so volume purchases will receive even lower prices. The system is available immediately. Sun has also reduced prices up to 30 percent on currently shipping Ultra systems. The price of an Ultra 1 Creator Model 170E has been reduced to $22,995 (US) from $25,995. The Ultra 2 Model 2200 Creator3D is now priced at $52,495 (US), reduced from $59,995. The new Ultra 2 Creator Model 1170 is an expandable system priced at $25,995 (US). The dual-processor version of this configuration, the Model 2170 is priced at only $28,495 (US). Shipments begin in May. The Ultra 2 Creator Model 1200 is priced at $29,995 (US). The dual-processor version of this configuration, the Model 2200 Creator, is priced at $37,495 (US). Shipments begin this quarter. Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA[3]) is an American vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information-technology services, founded on 24 February 1982. Computer Company is a world leader in the design, manufacture and sale of network computing systems and is a division of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Recognized for quality and innovation, the company's SPARC (Scalable Performance ARChitecture) A family of RISC CPUs from Sun that runs mostly under Sun's Solaris, but also under Linux and BSD operating systems. After development began in the mid-1980s by David Patterson of the University of California at Berkeley and Bill workstations and multiprocessing servers each hold the No. 1 UNIX marketshare position. These systems are used primarily by businesses, educational institutions and governments worldwide for technical, commercial, industrial, and software development applications. -0- Note to Editors: Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, TurboGX, Ultra and UltraComputing are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. and other countries. All SPARC(TM) 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. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. Press announcements and other information about Sun Microsystems are available on the Internet via the World Wide Web using a tool such as Netscape or NCSA (1) (National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana-Champaign, IL, www.ncsa.uiuc.edu) A high-performance computing facility located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Mosaic. Type http://www.sun.com at the URL URL in full Uniform Resource Locator Address of a resource on the Internet. The resource can be any type of file stored on a server, such as a Web page, a text file, a graphics file, or an application program. prompt. For reader inquiries, telephone 800/821-4643. CONTACT: Sun Microsystems Computer Company Gayle Jennings, 415/786-8126 or Burson-Marsteller Public Relations public relations, activities and policies used to create public interest in a person, idea, product, institution, or business establishment. By its nature, public relations is devoted to serving particular interests by presenting them to the public in the most Charlie Scibetta, 415/614-0670 |
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