Sun's Starfire HPC Server
Captures Top Position
AS THE LEADING ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOST
SUCCESSFUL SUPERCOMPUTING MODELS IN THE
INDUSTRY

Sun Starfire HPC Server Solidifies Its Position Above IBM, HP and Fujitsu; Sun Achieves 2nd Highest Ranking Overall on the Semi-annual Top 500 List.

PALO ALTO, Calif.- Sun Microsystems, Inc.
today announced that for the second consecutive time, its HPC
10000 (Starfire) servers running the Solaris operating environment,
captured the number two ranking on the Top 500 list of the most
powerful supercomputer sites. Sun has the second highest number
of systems of all companies on the list, accounting for 111 systems
(all of which are HPC 10000 servers). As such, the Starfire server is
the the leading architecture on the Top 500 list. The number two
ranking on the 11th semi-annual survey solidifies Sun's position
above IBM, HP and Fujitsu, and further demonstrates Sun's
continued commitment to providing scalable, cost-effective
SMP-based supercomputing-class solutions for HPC compute- and
data-intensive applications.

"Ranking second on the Top 500 list after entering the HPC market
less than a year and a half ago demonstrates the acceptance by
customers of the clarity of Sun's high-end vision and the industry's
most scalable SMP solution," said Clark Masters, vice president and
general manager of Sun Microsystems' Data Center and High
Performance Computing Product Group. "Sun also ranked second
in terms of total installed actual power with 2154 Gflops, putting us
ahead of IBM, Intel and Fujitsu."

The Top 500 list of the world's most powerful computer systems has
been compiled semi-annually since June 1993 to facilitate the
establishment of collaborations, the exchange of data and software,
and provide a better understanding of the high-performance
computer market. The most successful computer models in the new
TOP500 list are Sun's HPC 10000 systems with 111 installations;
SGI's Origin 2000 with 91 installations; and IBM's SP2 System
with 75 installations. Results are compiled from HPC experts,
computational scientists, manufacturers, and the Internet community
in general, who respond to a detailed questionnaire. Computer
systems are ranked by their performance on the LINPACK
Benchmark, a widely used metric emphasizing floating point
performance.

"The Top 500 list reflects the impact and continuing trend of new
market models aimed at leveraging mainstream technology in the
HPC market," said Debra Goldfarb, an HPC analyst at IDC. "The
technical community benefits by having more reliable and viable
suppliers to work with and gains access to proven technology Sun
first developed for commercial users."

In order to continue driving success in the high-performance
computing space, Sun today also announced that it has acquired
Dakota Scientific Software Inc. (DSS), a leading supplier of
high-performance software components for scientific and
engineering applications. (SEE SEPARATE RELEASE ISSUED
TODAY.)

Sun HPC Servers

Sun's HPC compute engines are based on a highly leveraged
model, where SPARCTM technology is integrated into a family of
SMP servers. The model is integral to Sun's continued success in
the commercial market, giving HPC customers the security of
knowing Sun will remain committed to continuing to develop,
enhance and upgrade their HPC products.

Sun's complete HPC line includes six high-performance SMP
systems, the HPC 450, 3500, 4500, 5500, 6500 and Starfire, all
running the robust SolarisTM operating environment and are binary
compatible with the entire SPARC Solaris installed base, providing
tremendous investment protection and desktop-to-teraflop
scalability. Sun's wide range of SMP systems, enables customers to
choose products that fit present needs while providing the
headroom to grow as needs change. The Sun HPC servers, range in
size from a four-processor Sun HPC 450 system to the 64-processor
Sun HPC 10000 system.

Bundled with each Sun HPC server is the Sun HPC 2.0 software,
designed specifically for compute-intensive, technical computing
environments. Sun's HPC 2.0 software enables 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
ComputerTM," has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc.
(NASDAQ:SUNW), to its position as a leading provider of high
quality hardware, software and services for establishing
enterprise-wide intranets and expanding the power of the Internet.
With more than $9 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in
more than 150 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.usec.sun.com/
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