Sun Microsystems Introduces Sun-4 Series Of Workstations

Sun Microsystems Introduces Sun-4 Series Of Workstations

Dow Jones News Service - Ticker

July 8, 1987

NEW YORK -DJ- Sun Microsystems Inc. introduced the Sun-4 family of 10-MIPS supercomputing workstations and servers that the company said give users the performance of a VAX 8800 system at one-tenth the price.

Sun said the introduction marks the delivery of the the first supercomputing workstation with a full complement of system and applications software available. Several original equipment manufacturers, including Valid Logic and LSI Logic, have ported software applications to the new Sun platform, and more than 90 third-party software developers have either ported their product or demonstrated intent to port to the new system, the company said.

Sun said the primary markets targeted are high-end mechanical-CAD applications, such as solids modeling and finite element analysis, electrical-CAD applications including IC and PC layout and routing; artificial intelligence development, earth resources and molecular modeling.

The Sun-4 family is source-code compatible with the Sun-3 and Sun-2 families of 680X0 microprocessor-based products, allowing all three product-families to use the same software and be combined in network installations. Sun said it is also supplying software tools to ease the porting process, allowing migration to the newer, high-performance family of workstations at the user's discretion.

Sun Microsystems Introduces Workstations

Dow Jones News Service - Ticker

July 8, 1987

NEW YORK -DJ- Sun Microsystems Inc., which introduced its Sun-4 family of 10-MIPS supercomputing workstations, also introduced a server series based on its new Scalable Processor ARChitecture (SPARC) technology.

A Sun-4-260 high-resolution, monochrome deskside workstation with eight megabytes of main memory is priced at $39,900.

Sample server configurations range from $36,900 for the Sun-4-260S pedestal model with eight megabytes of main memory to $104,900 for a Sun-4-280S server with 32 megabytes of main memory and 1.2 gigabytes of disk and tape storage.

Upgrades for Sun-3-260 and Sun-3-160 workstations to the 10-MIPS Sun-4 performance are also available. The upgrades are priced at $13,900 for the Sun-3-260 and at $23,900 for the Sun-3-160.

Sun Microsystems Introduces Workstations

Dow Jones News Service - Ticker

July 8, 1987

NEW YORK -DJ- Sun Microsystems Inc., which introduced its Unix-based Sun-4 family of 10-MIPS supercomputing workstations and servers, said it will license its new Scalable Processor ARChitecture (SPARC) architecture, operating system and related development tools and compilers to semiconductor and systems manufacturers.

Sun said it also introduced the Symbolic Programming Environment, a set of software tools for the development of artificial intelligence applications on Sun's general-purpose workstations. The new software lists for $3,500 and will be available in the first quarter of 1988 for the Sun-4 and Sun-3 families of workstations, the company said.