Sun Hits Key Milestone With CoolThreads Servers, Solaris 10 By Surpassing One Million CPU Threads Shipped

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced that it has shipped over one million CPU "threads," and passed the half-billion dollar revenue mark for its Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers. When Sun introduced the chip multithreading (CMT) UltraSPARC(R) T1 processor and systems in late 2005, it demonstrated that its breakthrough multi-core, multi-thread approach could deliver superior performance while also being highly space and energy efficient. Sun's threaded approach starts with the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), which treats each thread as a virtual CPU, thus enabling brutal efficiency and energy savings.


To demonstrate the potential energy savings and eco-advantages of the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers, Sun is estimating that since the first product was shipped over a half billion pounds of CO2 have been saved from entering the atmosphere. This is equivalent taking over twenty nine thousand cars off the road for a year, or not burning 17.7 million gallons of gasoline. With these potential savings to the environment, it's fitting that Sun's achievement coincides with International Earth Day.

"While Solaris has been able to handle thousands of parallel threads for over a decade, we made the decision a few years ago to focus SPARC development on chip multi-threading. We bet that what will matter to CIOs is data center efficiency - maximizing the amount of work that gets done at the lowest possible operating cost," said John Fowler, executive vice president of Sun's Systems business. "We now calculate that only 15 percent of the T1000 CPU processor cycles go unused, which compares very favorably to the 85 percent wasted cycles from competitive processors. In today's business environment, where electricity is expensive but the need for compute performance is increasing, we're convinced we've taken the best approach for customers, and, we hope, the planet as well."

The UltraSPARC T1 processor, with its 32-threads, is just the first in a roadmap of CMT processors that Sun will introduce over the next two years. Sun plans to ship systems based on its 64-thread "Niagara 2" processor in the second-half of this calendar year. And Sun has successfully completed the tapeout (initial design completion for first fabrication) of its high-end "Rock" processor.

Customers can evaluate the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers for 60 days with no obligation to buy through Sun's 'Try and Buy Program': (www.sun.com/tryandbuy/). The program and these servers have helped Sun reach customers outside its installed base, and have played an important role in helping Sun grow its server market share for four consecutive quarters, according to the most recent IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker. Customers that have purchased the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers include Fotolog, Joyent, City of Henderson, Lokalisten, DigiTar and PlanetOut.