Sun Delivers Industry-Leading Performance For SPEC95 Benchmark With Sun HPC Server and Storage Solutions.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 21, 1997--Sun Microsystems, Inc., today announced industry leading results for a series of SPEC95 benchmarks, demonstrating the ability of the Sun(TM) HPC 10000 server (popularly known as Starfire(TM)) to scale efficiently and provide leading price/performance for single- or clustered-node solutions.

Now, customers can realize supercomputing-class processing power with a small number of easy-to-manage, commercially available Sun systems, all of which run the award-winning Solaris(TM) operating environment and maintain binary compatibility with the largest base of UNIX(R) applications for proven robustness.

"The SPEC95 results are further proof of Sun's ability to provide a high-performance, cost-effective solution for compute-intensive applications within the HPC (high performance computing) arena," said Shahin Khan, director of marketing for Sun's Data Center and HPC Product Group. "Our HPC offerings, from middleware and development tools to servers, storage and services, form a solid foundation that enables organizations to implement scalable, cost-effective solutions in an easy-to-manage environment while maintaining supercomputing-class processing power."

Benchmark Results and Configuration

The single system SPEC95 results were performed on a 64 CPU Starfire server running the highly robust Solaris 2.5.1 operating environment and configured with 4 megabytes (MB) E-cache. The server configuration included 16 gigabytes (GB) memory and 189 GB of Sun(TM) RSM Array(TM) 2000 storage. The Starfire server achieved 4289 SPECint_rate_base95 and 4945 SPECint_rate95 integer processing performance. The same system, configured with 18 GB of Sun RSM Array 2000 storage, measured 5417 SPECfp_rate_base95 and 6013 SPECfp_rate95 floating-point processing performance. The SPECint_rate95 results are 186% faster than the nearest competitive results, by SGI'S Origin 2000, and demonstrate the Starfire system's ability to achieve the enormous capacity throughput required for floating-point and integer intensive applications.

A two-node Starfire cluster demonstrated 7339 SPECint_rate_base95 and 8381 SPECint_rate95 integer processing performance. Results for the clustered system were achieved using two 64 CPU Ultra HPC 10000 servers running the Solaris 2.6 operating environment, each configured with 4 MB E-cache, 16 GB memory and 189 GB of Sun RSM Array 2000 storage. Sun is the only company to have posted SPECint_rate95 benchmark results using clustered systems technology. The benchmark delivered 315% faster performance than the previous best result by the single-node SGI Origin 2000.

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Benchmark             System                 Result    No. CPUs
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SPECint_rate_base95   Sun HPC 10000          4289       64
SPECint_rate95        Sun HPC 10000          4945       64
SPECfp_rate_base95    Sun HPC 10000          5417       64
SPECfp_rate95         Sun HPC 10000          6013       64
SPECint_rate_base95   Sun HPC 10000 cluster  7339       128
SPECint_rate95        Sun HPC 10000 cluster  8381       128
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About the SPEC95 Benchmark

SPEC95 is an industry-standard benchmark created by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC), a global non-profit group of systems vendors, integrators, universities, research organizations and consultants. The benchmark is designed to provide equivalent measures of performance for comparing compute-intensive workloads on different computer systems. The SPEC rate metrics measure the rate-or throughput-of a system running multiple tasks. There are two suites of benchmarks for SPEC95: CINT95 (compute-intensive integer performance), which provides SPECint_rate95 and SPECint_rate_base95 numbers, and CFP95 (compute-intensive floating point performance), which provides SPECfp_rate95 and SPECfp_rate_base95 numbers. SPECint_rate95 and SPECfp_rate95 use aggressive compiler optimization, while SPECint_rate_base95 and SPECfp_rate_base95 use conservative optimization.

Sun HPC Servers

Sun's HPC server family is a line of seven high-performance SMP systems with binary compatibility across the company's product line. The Sun HPC servers, ranging in size from a two-processor Sun HPC 2 system to the 64-processor Sun HPC 10000 system, lead the industry in reliability and scalability.

The Sun HPC servers are complemented by Sun's HPC 2.0 software, designed specifically for compute-intensive, technical computing environments. Sun's HPC 2.0 software enables both the development and execution of serial and parallelized high-performance applications. It provides middleware to facilitate and manage the workload of highly resource-intensive applications on Sun's HPC servers, as well as clusters of these servers. Additionally, it provides the software development environment for creating and debugging applications that are parallelized for Sun's HPC servers and clusters.

Sun's current list of HPC customers includes some of the world's leading scientific, government, academic and technical computing organizations, such as: AMOCO Exploration and Production Technology Group, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brazil's CENAPAD-MG- High Performance Computing Center, BSH-Germany's Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, City University of Hong Kong and the University of Cologne.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision, "The Network Is The Computer(TM)," has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW), to its position as a leading provider of hardware, software and services for establishing enterprise-wide intranets and expanding the power of the Internet. With more than $8.5 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 150 countries and on the WorldWide Web at http://www.sun.com .

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Note to Editors: Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, Starfire, Solaris, Sun RSM Array 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.

Press announcements and other information about Sun Microsystems are available on the Internet via the World Wide Web using a tool such as Netscape Navigator or Sun's HotJava. Type http://www.sun.com at the URL prompt.

CONTACT: Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Maria Villarino, 650/786-3205

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Angela Hesse, 650/287-4018

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