Sun Introduces Netra Dataplane Software Suite Targeted At High Performance Data Plane Applications In The Telecom Market

Highly Optimized Packet Processing On Sun’s CoolThreads Servers And Blades Accelerate Deployment While Reducing Cost; CoolThreads Servers Today Support Solaris 10
HONG KONG ITU TELECOM WORLD 2006, December 5, 2006 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today introduced its Netra Dataplane Software (NDPS) Suite for the telecom market. Sun’s new software is the first standardized tool to quickly and efficiently deliver dataplane applications for the aggregation, transport and routing of voice, video, and data for the telecommunications network. NDPS, which runs on Sun’s Netra CoolThreads servers, makes it faster and less expensive for telecom customers to develop and deploy packet processing throughout the network.

“By delivering the first high-performance packet processing engine on Sun’s CoolThreads servers, we are showing that Sun’s general purpose OpenSPARC processors are ideal for pervasive IP networks,” said Raju Penumatcha, vice president, Netra Systems and Networking, Sun Microsystems. “NDPS along with the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) on CoolThreads will dramatically cut costs and time to market for service providers building such converged networks.”

The demand for computation using IP packets is exploding as three million subscribers join the network per week on internet capable handsets. In addition, network service providers are offering higher bandwidth, new generation services, and the ability to move seamlessly between public and private networks. To do this requires many computational tasks for each packet in real-time such as encryption, classification, transcoding, header conversion and forwarding. Today, these “dataplane” functions are performed by specialized processors and proprietary servers. To get the needed performance, Network Equipment Providers (NEPs) are forced to make extreme trade-offs in the time to build these processors, servers and functions as well as in cost to overprovision the network to forestall reprogramming.

With NDPS, application development time for NEPs is shortened from years to months, without compromising performance. Sun and NDPS eliminate the need to over design and over provision the network, avoiding any reprogramming delays down the road. With NDPS operators can deploy only what they need now and add systems easily as their capacity requirements grow. Running along side Solaris 10 - the most advanced OS on the planet, NDPS can also enable a new level of consolidation - resulting in lower hardware costs as the servers provide the ability to run dataplane functions and service applications together. And Sun helps address OEM concerns by providing an expanded set of specialized OEM offerings - including dedicated sales, pricing, supply chain, and product support throughout the product lifecycle - Sun is stepping up its OEM partnerships.

Sun’s Netra Dataplane Software (NDPS):

Sun’s Netra Dataplane Software includes a lightweight run-time environment that performs packet processing functions at multi-gigabit line rates on Sun’s CoolThreads servers. NDPS also includes a highly optimized development environment to simplify and accelerate development of these functions. Software portability is enabled by providing an ANSI C compiler and a programming model which is independent of the processor architecture. NDPS was also designed with its own library of reference applications that can be re-used and integrated into full-scale network elements. Sun will continue to add additional libraries over time – based on the work of a community of application developers and its own development.

Sun achieves industry comparable performance at dramatically reduced cost by leveraging the virtually unmatched thread density of its CoolThreads processors, System-on-Chip design and a scalable, high performance run-time environment. Sun can achieve up to an 80 percent reduction in development time and Sun’s support for open standards means developers can avoid hardware lock-in, and can leverage a common, high-level development environment based on ANSI C and standardized APIs.

NDPS will be sold and supported on Sun’s CoolThreads servers, including the T2000, Netra T2000 and CP3060.

For more information on Sun’s Netra servers which run NDPS, go to: http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hw/networking/t2000/index.xml and http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hw/networking/ct900/. To learn more about Sun’s entire Netra ATCA blade server family check out: http://www.sun.com/atca.

To find out more information on how Sun steps up OEM partnerships, go to: www.sun.com/oem.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

A singular vision -- “The Network Is The Computer” -- guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world’s most important markets. Sun’s philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Netra, CoolThreads, Solaris, and the Network is the Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and in other countries.

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