Sun Microsystems Announces Availability of First Chip-Multithreading Reference Design Kit

UltraSPARC T2 Design Kit Accelerates Delivery of Embedded Systems with Breakthrough Performance

SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- December 18, 2008 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced availability of the UltraSPARC T2 Reference Design Kit (RDK), to accelerate the design, development, and testing of UltraSPARC T2 processor-based embedded systems designs. Offering systems designers a comprehensive suite of development tools and hardware interconnect options needed to test, verify and optimize system performance, the RDK furthers Sun's commitment to the community of developers and programmers using chip-multithreading (CMT) technology around the globe. The UltraSPARC T2 Reference Design Kit is now available for order at: http://www.sun.com/products/microelectronics/support.jsp

"The availability of the UltraSPARC T2 Reference Design Kit is a significant step in Sun's effort to build a complete ecosystem to speed the adoption of SPARC CMT technology," said Mike Knudsen, vice president of marketing and business development for Sun's Microelectronics unit. "The RDK is an essential tool for network infrastructure designers to accelerate their development and delivery of next generation multicore, multithread platform designs, using an industry leader's most advanced processor architecture."

The UltraSPARC T2 processor is the industry's only volume processor with eight cores and eight threads per core, and boasts one of the industry's highest energy efficiency per thread. In addition, the UltraSPARC T2 is a model of integration, incorporating: dual 10 Gb Ethernet Network Interface Units (NIUs), eight Stream Processing Units (SPUs) for line rate cryptographic acceleration, and dual PCIe I/O interfaces on the chip. With unique, open, CMT processor designs, Sun is an industry leader in multicore and multithreading technology, and the UltraSPARC T2 processor is an exemplary platform for innovation in embedded systems in telco and network infrastructure, as well as network security devices.

The UltraSPARC T2 RDK includes the essential tools systems designers need to design, test, and verify their UltraSPARC T2-based designs. In addition to the processor and memory, the RDK motherboard includes a host of interconnect options, including: PCIe I/O slots (3), XAUI slots (2), Gb Ethernet ports (4), USB 2.0 ports (2), and SAS/SATA drive connectors (2). (A complete listing of all the available ports is included on the RDK datasheet: http://www.sun.com/products/microelectronics/pdfs/UST2-Ref-Design_DS.pdf.)

The UltraSPARC T2 RDK includes:

• eATX form-factor motherboard with an eight-core, 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC T2 processor
• Service Processor Module
• FBDIMM Memory Modules
• Hardware Manuals
• Complete board level design database
• Solaris 10 & Linux Boot Options
• System firmware (OpenBoot, Hypervisor, POST, Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM)‏
• CMT Development Tools
• Software Manuals

The RDK supports the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) and will also support Wind River's platform for Network Equipment, Carrier Grade Linux (CGL), available in early 2009. Wind River is the global leader in device software optimization (DSO). Wind River Platform for Network Equipment is the leading, commercial, carrier-grade Linux distribution, and is well-suited for developing system control and data plane software. Support for Wind River CGL on the UltraSPARC T2 processor vastly increases Sun's potential market for CMT processors in the embedded systems industry, and lets embedded systems designers leverage their existing tools and application expertise to incorporate Sun's advanced, multicore/multithread technology into their future systems designs.

"In the telecommunications and networking industry, utilizing a carrier grade operating system to build network applications is mandatory. Increasingly, equipment providers want to take advantage of the benefits of open source while also taking advantage of the performance and cost of high performance multicore processors. Combining Wind River's carrier grade Linux operating system with Sun's UltraSPARC T2 is the perfect combination," says Glenn Seiler, senior director of Market Development at Wind River. "Integrating Wind River's Platform for Network Equipment and an optimized toolchain for the UltraSPARC T2 RDK lets equipment providers leverage their existing applications and development experience while still taking advantage of the latest, highest performance multithreaded processor technology."

"We are looking forward to using Sun's UltraSPARC T2 reference design kit to accelerate development and test of additional system products based on the UltraSPARC T2 processor," said Bill Kehret, Themis' CEO.

Also among the first customers to review the UltraSPARC T2 RDK was Pinnacle Data Systems, Inc (PDSi). PDSi is a global provider of specialized embedded computing products, offering a range of standard and custom-designed products for the telecom, defense/aerospace, medical, semiconductor, industrial automation and IT markets."As a long standing Sun partner, we are excited to be developing our new CPT2-S1 CompactPCI compute blade around Sun's UltraSPARC T2 processor," commented John Bair, PDSi's Chief Technology and Innovation Officer. "The UltraSPARC T2 Reference Design Kit is a solid step in helping us accelerate our development efforts, and getting our UltraSPARC T2-based solutions to market quickly."

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision -- "The Network is the Computer" -- Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.