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	LONDON FUTURES EXCHANGE SELECTS SUN SPARC-BASED
		WORKSTATIONS FOR TRADING SYSTEM
 
Up to 1,000 SPARCstations to be Used for Futures and Options Trading 
  
 
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--October 23, 1989-- Sun Microsystems today
announced that the London International Financial Futures Exchange
(LIFFE), an exchange that trades in financial futures and options, has
chosen Sun

SPARCstation 1(TM) workstations for its automated pit trading (APT)
system -- the first such system to electronically simulate the features
of "pit" trading.

Currently, trading takes place in what is called "the pit," where
registered traders buy and sell futures and options contracts by "open
outcry" (shouting trades aloud).  APT is the first automated trading
system to preserve the principles of open outcry trading by replicating
the pit, the individual trading positions and various pricing data for
each of the trading activities on Sun workstation screens.  This
information is updated interactively as trading takes place.  APT will
allow the extension of trading hours to complement the 8 a.m. to 4
p.m.  European trading day in order to attract additional business,
particularly from European banks and institutions.

Up to 1,000 Sun SPARCstation 1 workstations will be located within
LIFFE member's offices and linked via land lines to LIFFE's central APT
system at the Royal Exchange, which will contain SPARCstation 300
workstations.  These, in turn, will be networked to the main trading
support system -- a DEC VAX 8800 cluster -- via Ethernet, utilizing a
proprietary high-performance transport level protocol of LIFFE's own
design, together with SunLink(TM) DNI (Sun's implementation of
DECnet).

"We chose Sun for a number of reasons but mainly for the ease with
which Sun systems can be integrated into our own network and other
vendors' computer systems," said Dr. Peter Mather, LIFFE information
technology manager.  "The decision to purchase Sun workstations
followed an evaluation of many competitive products and in our opinion,
Sun offered the best solution available, both technically and
commercially," he added.

The communications links between the central systems and the member
sites are critical to the operation of APT.  Information is passed at
very high speeds, enabling a bid or an offer made on APT to be
registered at the central system and the confirmation to be received by
the member within 2/10ths of a second.  This also allows buy or sell
instructions to be confirmed immediately.

This is ten times faster than the most optimistic forecasts normally
made by order matching systems and it is this speed that will allow
trading to take place in a realistic fashion.  Moreover, the
specialized type of communications employed within APT ensures that
everybody within the APT environment will receive the same information
at exactly the same time.

Established in 1982, LIFFE is an exchange that is owned by its members,
presently comprised of 180 major financial services organizations.  It
trades in futures and options (instruments that allow users to hedge
risk in the underlying cash markets).

Sun Microsystems, Inc., headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., is a
leading worldwide supplier of network-based distributed computing
systems, including professional workstations, servers and UNIX
operating system and productivity software.

###

SPARCstation and SunLink are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc.  UNIX
is a registered trademark of AT&T.  All other products or services
mentioned in this document are identified by the trademarks or service
marks of their respective companies or organizations.

Press Contact:  Cindee Mock (415) 336-3563