GSG and ESG: NEW PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENTS (GSG - General Systems Group ESG - Entry Systems Group -johnj) Sun will announce today, April 12th, the realization of the vision. At a worldwide press conference in San Francisco we will welcome our customers to the "new world". We will demonstrate Computing without Compromise. We will show unmatched price/performance, the broadest line of workstation and server platforms, the widest range of graphics performance and functionality, industry leading UNIX, windowing and networking and demonstrate more than 100 applications running on our new products. This e-mail will give you an overview of the following new products which make this vision real: Sun-3/80 Sun-3/400 Series SPARCstation 1 SPARCsystem 300 Series SunOS 4.0.3 OpenWindows Desk Set Sun-3/80 - SUN'S MOST AFFORDABLE DESKTOP WORKSTATION To meet the growing demands for high performance, increased graphics power and advanced configurability, Sun is introducing the Sun-3/80. The Sun-3/80 is the most versatile and affordable desktop workstation in the industry. Based on the Motorola 68030/68882 chip set, the 3/80 delivers 3 MIPS of integer performance and 0.16 MFlops DP Linpack floating point performance. It is available as a Mono, Color, GX or TC system and is packaged in a new compact desktop package. This sleek package houses 2 internal 104MB SCSI disks and a 1.4MB Floppy Disk Drive. Sun-3/80 prices start at $5995 for mono systems and $9495 for color systems. The Sun-3/80GX offers graphics performance that is unmatched by any competitor at the industry's lowest price. Starting at $13,995, the 3/80GX can calculate and display over 325,000 2D vectors/second and 100,000 3D vectors/second. The Sun-3/80TC is the most powerful desktop true color solution on the market. The 3/80TC can display over 16.7 million colors and offers a 1 bit overlay plane. Compared to the competition, the Sun-3/80 offers either more performance at a similar price, or a lower price for similar performance. In particular, fully configured systems (8MB, 208MB SCSI) are at substantially lower prices. And, no competitor offes the power of GX or the capability of TC. The Sun-3/80 is tough to beat! Sun-3/400 Series - A SUPERIOR BALANCE OF SYSTEM PERFORMANCE With the Sun-3/400 series, Sun introduces its most powerful family of general purpose workstations and servers based on the Motorola 68030 processor. The Sun-3/400 series, which is priced approximately the same as the Sun-3/200 Series, comprises the Sun-3/470 power user workstations and the Sun-3/470 and Sun-3/480 networked servers. These systems deliver 7 MIPS integer performance and are the industry's most expandable 68030-based systems providing up to 128 MBytes of reliable ECC memory, 6.8 Gbytes of disk capacity in deskside systems, and up to 14.3 Gbytes of disk capacity in the Data-Center server. The Sun-3/470 deskside workstation incorporates the new 12-slot Office Pedestal which accomodates up to 1 Gbyte of SCSI disk capacity and a 150MB tape, all in the base package. With binary compatibility with over 2,300 applications, balanced cpu, I/O, and graphics performance, the Sun-3/400 will allow you to provide a very attractive growth path for your existing Sun-3 customers. SPARCstation 1 - THE NEW STANDARD FOR DESKTOP COMPUTING For users that require the supercomputing power of SPARC yet need the affordability and functionality of a desktop workstation, Sun is introducing the SPARCstation 1. With the SPARCstation 1, we're integrating more power with more features at industry leading prices. The SPARCstation 1 delivers 12.5 MIPS of integer performance and 1.4 MFlops DP Linpack floating point performance. It is available as a Mono, Color, or GX system and is packaged in a new compact desktop package. This sleek package houses 2 internal 104 MB synchronous SCSI disks, and a 1.4 MB Floppy Disk Drive. In addition to the integration and flexibility of the package, the SPARCstation 1 offers expansion versatility with three S bus connectors. It has full audio capabilities including an internal speaker and audio jacks. Prices for SPARCstation 1 systems start at $8,995 in mono configurations and $12,495 for color systems. To complement the powerful integer and floating point performance of the system, the SPARCstation 1GX packs more graphics power into a desktop package than any other workstation. The SPARCstation 1GX can draw 400,000 2-D vectors/second and 175,000 3-D vectors/second. Starting at $14,995, the SPARCstation 1GX provides fast vector and wireframe capabilities unmatched by workstations twice the price. The system's innovative, compact design and fast processing capabilities combined with its integrated mass storage and versatile functionality make the SPARCstation 1 the new standard for desktop computing. Add powerful graphics and an industry leading price point and you have a product that can't be beat by any competition. SPARCsystem 300 Series - UNEQUALED COMPUTING SOLUTIONS The SPARCsystem 300 Series provides powerful, expandable systems to meet the demanding performance needs of a wide variety of applications. Sun now has the broadest line of supercomputing graphics workstations with the SPARCstation 330 and 370 systems and the SPARCserver 330, 370 and 390 provide unprecedented network versatility. SPARCstation 300 Series ----------------------- Delivering 16 MIPS (Dhrystones) and 2.6 Mflops (double precision Linpack), the SPARCstation 300 Series of high performance graphics workstations gives Sun the ability to provide a variety of customers with outstanding compute, graphics, and I/O performance across the entire spectrum of visual access computing in distributed environments. All while retaining complete applications binary compatibility with the existing Sun-4 family of products. For visual design, SPARCstation 330GX and 370GX systems offer unsurpassed 8-bit 2-D performance for EDA applications, as well as unbeatable 3-D wireframe performance for MDA applications. With the SPARCstation 330GXP, you have the most competitive 24-bit 3-D solids system in the industry. With new functionality such as depth-cueing, lighting, and 24-bit RGB true color, applications and markets previously unservable are yours for the taking. For even more demanding applications in terms of memory and I/O expansion, the SPARCstation 370GXP is available with up to 56 MB of memory and up to 5.5 GB of high-capacity SMD mass storage to address the large data set requirements found in a number of scientific markets, such as earth resources. In addition, a SPARCstation 370GX can be configured with Sun's TAAC-1 programmable accelerator offering unsurpassed performance and functionality for visual analysis and visual synthesis. Applications in image processing, volume rendering, and photo-realistic rendering are easily and efficiently accomodated with SPARCstation 370GX and TAAC-1. SPARCserver 300 Series ---------------------- To provide increased performance, expand the effectiveness of computer networks and to provide centralized resources that can be accessed by any user, Sun is introducing the SPARCserver 300 Series. SPARCservers are the industry's leading family of RISC-based servers -- a family which brings: * Leadership price-performance vs DEC, HP, Mips * Hundreds of SPARC-based applications, including leading MCAD, ECAD, and Relational Database packages * Industry leading I/O -- from synchronous SCSI on the SPARCserver 330 --- to IPI on the SPARCserver 390, the hottest standards-based I/O around * The best heterogenous networking story in the business All members of the SPARCserver 300 Series utilize the same high performance processor as the SPARCstation 300 Series, which offers 16 MIPS Dhrystone and 2.6 DP Linpack MFLOP performance. SPARCserver 330 The SPARCserver 330 Sun's entry level office server -- powerful, compact and economical. A complete configured system with SCSI disk and cartridge tape lists for under $30K. With its low cost and high performance, the SPARCserver 330 is an ideal compute server or file server for small workgroups (typically 5-10 diskless clients). And, unlike the DECsystem 3100S, the SPARCserver 330 is expandable, allowing it to function as a great low end multi-user system with up to 36 direct connect ports or as a communications gateway. SPARCserver 370 The SPARCserver 370 is designed to provide greater I/O performance and expandability for office environments. It can support medium to large workgroups of NFS clients (typically 10-20 diskless) and is an excellent database server, multi-user system, and compute server. SPARCserver 390 The SPARCserver 390 achieves a new milestone in Sun server capabilities. This system provides unsurpassed system throughput, disk I/O performance, and expandability in its price range. It has the power and capacity to support large networks of NFS clients and is Sun's premier general-purpose computer system for demanding database management, multi-user, and compute server applications. With the introduction of the SPARCserver 390, Sun becomes the first major Unix systems vendor to offer I/O subsystems based in the IPI standard. With IPI, we have the I/O performance and capacity to effectively take on the VAX 6300 series. DEC offers an 8 MIPS VAX 6320 with 2GB of disk and a 1/2" tape for about $350K; Sun can offer a 16 MIPS SPARCserver 390 with 2GB and 1/2" tape for about a third of this. SunOS 4.0.3 - THE UNIFYING FORCE SunOS 4.0.3, the newest and completely compatible member of the SunOS 4.x family, provides the most technologically advanced and robust system software platform for all of the exciting new Sun products. SunOS 4.0.3 is the only OS release to support SPARCstation 1, SPARCsystem 300, Sun-3/80 and Sun-3/400, the new SPARC- and Motorola-based workstations and servers. In addition to the new platforms, this release also carries forward support for the existing Sun-2, Sun-3 and Sun-4 systems. New peripherals supported by SunOS 4.0.3 include new I/O, graphics, and floating point subsystems. Support for the SMD-4 disk controller and its corresponding 688MB 8-inch SMD disk, both of which are critical to Sun's high performance deskside workstations and servers, has been consolidated into 4.0.3. The existing 4.0.1 feature tape will no longer be issued. Likewise, the feature tape support for the CG8, 24-bit unaccelerated frame buffer -- the basis of Sun's TC Series of true color workstations -- has been integrated into 4.0.3. The CG8 feature tape will also be obsoleted. Support for other graphics devices includes the CG6, 8-bit accelerated frame buffer which is an integral part of the GX Series workstations, and SunDials, a graphics input device that simplifies the task of creating and manipulating graphical objects. In terms of floating point subsystems, 4.0.3 is the first release to fully support FPU2, the new floating point unit for the Sun-4/1x0 and Sun-4/2x0, which can dramatically improve the performance of floating point intensive applications even in their current Sun-4 binary form (higher levels of performance may be realized by recompiling with the new Sun FORTRAN 1.2 compiler). Another important feature introduced by SunOS 4.0.3 is SunDiag, the new generation of system diagnostics. SunDiag increases the breadth of testing, supports all of the new platforms, incorporates an enhanced SunView-based user interface, and permit both local and remote testing. To ease the transition, SunDiag has been carefully designed and implemented to be completely compatible with SysDiag. SysDiag has been moved to the /usr/old directory as an indication of its impending obsolescence and removal from the SunOS release tape (in the SunOS 4.1 timeframe). As a result of the stabilization of SunOS 4.X, the marked increase in the number of 4.X based applications and the acceleration in the migration to 4.X, SunOS 4.0.3 will obsolete the current SunOS 3.X releases. The SunOS 3.X releases will be no longer appear in the End User/OEM Price List and will be orderable only through the Internal Price List in an unbundled form (i.e., media and documentation must be ordered separately). Finally, given the low volume of Sun-2 OS orders, 4.0.3 will be the final release to support Sun-2 systems. The resources used to support Sun-2's will be better used to improve quality, performance and enhance the feature set of OS releases targeted to the current product offerings. Please take this opportunity to remind your customers of the Sun-2 de-support, inform them of the SunOS 3.X obsolescence and encourage them to migrate to SunOS 4.0.3. OpenWindows Desk Set - INTEGRATED, EASY-TO-USE EVERYDAY TOOLS FOR UNIX Along with the new Motorola and SPARC-based platforms, Sun will also unveil a suite of graphics-oriented, window-based personal productivity tools built around the OPEN LOOKTM graphical user interface specification. Called the OpenWindowsTM DeskSet, these "everyday" tools give unprecedented ease of use to UNIX, replacing the keying in of commands with the point and click of a mouse for performing common, frequent tasks like file manipulation and sending or receiving electronic mail. Sun is making these software tools available for all its workstations as a no-cost option. The OpenWindows Desk Set includes a file manager, mailtool, text editor, icon editor, snapshot tool, performance meters and clock. The "drag and drop" method of directly manipulating visual objects with a mouse allows work to become very fast and intuitive. For example, files can be loaded by dragging an icon and dropping it in the appropriate window, or copied by dragging the icon and dropping it in another folder. These products work within the X11/NeWSTM window environment. In addition, third-party X Window System applications can be added to the OpenWindows Desk Set through the file manager. The tools are integrated with one another and with other Sun applications based on the OPEN LOOK specification, such as the recently-introduced SunWrite, SunPaint and SunDraw productivity products. All these tools give users a friendly way to simplify working with the powerful UNIX operating system. The Tools: o FILEMAKER is the foundation of the tool suite, providing an "at-a-glance" view of the hierarchical UNIX file structure, allowing users to open any file with the click of a mouse; o MAIL TOOL simplifies sending, receiving and manipu- lating electronic messages. One unique capability is letting the user work on multiple messages simultane- ously; o SNAPSHOT TOOL is a unique product that allows to "take a picture" of the entire screen or any part of it; o TEXT EDITOR is a mouse-driven tool that enables user to interactively manipulate ASCII text; o ICON EDITOR is for creating and revising icons and cursor images; o PERFORMANCE METERS give a graphical view of system performance; o CLOCK displays time and date Sun's new tool suite is offered with the OpenWindows application environment, which consists of OPEN LOOK, X11/NeWS and the XViewTM toolkit. OpenWindows is available as an option for all Sun workstation families including those introduced today. Specifications of the OpenWindows technology are freely available now, including OPEN LOOK, XView and X11/NeWS documentation. Full availability is scheduled for July. At that time, X11/NeWS source code will be licensed from Sun, while the XView toolkit will be offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as part of its X source code tape, which will include OPEN LOOK.