SUNNYVALE, CALIF.-Nov. 17, 2004- AMD (NYSE: AMD) today celebrated the one-year anniversary of the strategic alliance with Sun Microsystems, Inc. As part of the alliance, AMD also announced support for the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) introduced on Monday, Nov. 15.



To date, the AMD-Sun alliance has produced a complete roster of AMD Opteron(tm) processor-based Sun Fire servers and Sun Java workstation solutions that deliver industry-leading performance to the enterprise. The four-way Sun Fire V40z server recently achieved world-record results on SPEC OMPM2001, a key benchmark for scientific applications. The Sun Fire V20z is one of the top-performing two-way x86 servers available today. The 1P Sun Java workstation W1100z and 2P Sun Java workstation W2100z are the latest in the family of AMD Opteron processor-based products from Sun Microsystems and are designed to maximize end user productivity. Users can find additional information on the benchmarks and at the records set by these products at http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2004-09/sunflash.20040921.6.html.



"This is a milestone for the industry. For the past year AMD has worked closely with Sun to change the economics of the enterprise market," said Dirk Meyer, executive vice president, Computation Products Group, AMD. "AMD and Sun are helping ensure that cost effective solutions deliver new levels of performance for end users across a broad range of industry segments. As we move into 2005 and the introduction of AMD64 multi-core technology, enterprises can look forward to an expanding portfolio of highly scalable AMD Opteron processor-based server and workstation platforms from Sun."



On Monday, Sun Microsystems launched the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) optimized for AMD64 technology. This is the first version of Solaris to support AMD Opteron processors while running in 64-bit mode, enabling customers to take advantage of the industry's number one UNIX platform, as well as compatibility between 32-bit and 64-bit environments.

"The AMD Opteron processor with Direct Connect Architecture offers significant performance advantages over traditional front-side bus designs," said John Fowler, executive vice president of Sun's Network Systems Group. "We have collaborated with AMD to build systems that capitalize on this performance boost to the x86 server market and deliver value to our customers. The AMD and Sun alliance has already had a significant impact on the industry in just one year and we look forward to their dual-core processors and continued growth in the high-volume space."

Going forward, AMD and Sun plan to continue to drive widespread adoption of AMD Opteron processor-based systems at all levels of enterprise environments. By working with Sun to deliver reliable, secure solutions with industry-leading performance, AMD will continue its tradition of customer-centric innovation.