Fujitsu And Sun Microsystems Set The Standard For Open Systems Computing With Fastest, Most Reliable

Fujitsu Limited and Sun Microsystems, Inc. today unveiled a new line-up of co-developed servers that hold the promise of dramatically reshaping the computing market by delivering mainframe-class reliability with open systems advantages. The new servers, based on the SPARC architecture and running the Solaris 10 operating system (OS), are the fastest SPARC servers ever, and will be marketed by both companies and affiliates under the "SPARC Enterprise" product brand. The systems are ideal for customers requiring highly scaleable, reliable servers, and needing to achieve increased system utilization and performance through virtualization. The servers leverage the powerful combination of Fujitsu's expertise in mission-critical computing technologies and high-performance processor design, and Sun's expertise in open, scaleable, network computing.

Co-Developed "SPARC Enterprise" Servers To Be Co-Marketed By Fujitsu and Sun

The SPARC Enterprise server line-up is the culmination of over two years of joint development between Fujitsu and Sun, building on their 20-year strategic relationship. The new servers address the growing customer need to maximize system utilization by offering an array of highly granular partitioning and domaining technologies. The SPARC Enterprise servers are also designed to ensure minimal downtime. They contain mainframe-class RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) features such as hot-swappable components (which includes memory and processors) redundant hardware, instruction retry, memory mirroring and extensive diagnostic and healing capabilities.

To protect customers' existing datacenter investments, Sun guarantees 100% Solaris binary compatibility. This means Fujitsu's PRIMEPOWER or Sun's Sun Fire server customers can adopt the new SPARC Enterprise platform with ease and confidence, enabling them to continue to use the broad range of proven Solaris applications (the No. 1 share in the UNIX market) from the world's top ISV/IHV providers.

"These new systems help customers tackle the world's most challenging computing problems, whether in the back office or in high-performance computing," said John Fowler, executive vice president of Sun's Systems group. "And they achieve this performance while delivering mainframe reliability with the unmatched virtualization capabilities that Solaris customers expect."

"The combination of Fujitsu's mission-critical computing technology and Sun's Solaris in the new SPARC Enterprise server line-up, enables us to deliver maximum business value to our customers, "said Chiaki Ito, Corporate Senior Executive Vice President, Fujitsu Limited. "Not only will they see outstanding performance, smarter resource management and reduced administrative intervention, but unparalleled levels of quality and scalability, that mean increased longevity of use and improved business growth potential."

The new servers are already demonstrating their performance leadership. The SPARC Enterprise M8000 (16 processors, 32 cores, 64 threads) with SPARC64 VI 2.4 GHz processor running SAP ERP 2005, Oracle Database 10g and Solaris 10 set a new world-record for the SAP SD 2-tier standard application benchmark for systems with 16 processors as of 04/17/07, achieving 7,300 SD benchmark users.*

New SPARC Enterprise Servers

The new SPARC Enterprise servers will include six models. Entry models use the UltraSPARC T1 processor developed by Sun Microsystems. Mid-range and high-end models use the SPARC64 VI processor developed by Fujitsu. These systems deliver up to 50 percent more performance than current SPARC-based servers. All the new servers run the Solaris 10 operating system.

Both Fujitsu branded and Sun branded SPARC Enterprise servers will be marketed worldwide. All other features are identical. The systems are available today.

Read the original article: http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2007-04/sunflash.20070417.1.xml