PHILIPS LICENSES SPARC FROM SUN
	KEY EUROPEAN WIN FURTHERS WORLDWIDE ACCEPTANCE OF SPARC
 
Philips To Design SPARC Chips And Embedded Controllers
  
 
SANTA CLARA, Calif. --Aug. 8, 1989-- N.V. Philips of The Netherlands
and Sun Microsystems today announced the signing of a licensing
agreement that will allow Philips Components, a division of the
multinational firm, to design and market 32-bit RISC microprocessors
based on Sun's SPARC(TM) architecture.  The announcement was made at a
press briefing held here.

Philips Components will develop SPARC processors and build them into
embedded controllers for electronic data processing, industrial,
military, telecommunications and consumer applications.  The company
also may design and sell SPARC microprocessors and other SPARC
components for use in a range of products, including general-purpose
SPARC computers.  In addition, Philips Components will supply SPARC
chips to other divisions within Philips.

Since Philips is a leading electronics company and the largest
semiconductor manufacturer in Europe, this agreement further
demonstrates the worldwide market acceptance of SPARC, stated Scott
McNealy, president and CEO of Sun.

"Signing the top European semiconductor manufacturer was one of our
major goals for SPARC," he said.  "SPARC is showing considerable
geographic and application breadth.  It's achieved design wins for a
range of systems from U.S. companies and European companies, along with
recent commitments from major Pacific Rim PC manufacturers.  And now,
we'll see embedded controllers -- and, potentially, more SPARC systems
-- coming from Europe," said McNealy.

 Philips To Sell SPARC Products Worldwide

SPARC processors will be designed around Philips's CMOS and advanced
new BiCMOS technology.  Most of the development will take place in
Europe, with manufacturing and sales of SPARC products to be handled by
locations worldwide, including the United States.

Currently, the company licenses Intel's 8-bit architecture and the
16-bit architecture of Motorola.  Before deciding on SPARC as its
32-bit architecture, Philips investigated all the RISC alternatives.
"We chose our 32-bit architecture very carefully, since this important
product area represents by far the largest sales growth potential of
all microprocessors," said Peter Draheim, director of BUIC (Business
Unit, Integrated Circuits) within Philips Components.  The company has
no plans to license a 32-bit CISC architecture or any other RISC
architecture, he said.

With a major European company now offering SPARC components, U.S.-based
corporations can commit to this emerging worldwide RISC standard and be
in compliance with the "European content" requirements that will become
effective in 1992.  At that time, some portion of many products sold
within the European Community must have been manufactured by a member
country.

 SPARC Superior To Other RISCs

According to Draheim, the company selected SPARC for its performance,
open architecture, scalability, price and other factors.  "We feel that
SPARC is becoming a standard for RISC technology," he said.  "Another
deciding factor for us was SPARC's clear advantage over other RISC
architectures in the availability of design tools."  He added that
SPARC's powerful suite of system software, including the SunOS(TM) and
System V Release 4 UNIX(R) operating systems and OPEN LOOK(TM)
graphical user interface, along with the large selection of application
software for SPARC -- at 750 packages, more than for all other RISC
platforms -- convinced Philips that SPARC would remain the leading RISC
solution.

Sun designed SPARC as an open architecture that could be developed by
different semiconductor manufacturers using a range of technologies.
Because of this "scalability," SPARC processors can power many
different systems, from laptops to supercomputers.  The common element
is binary compatibility, which enables all SPARC systems to run the
same software.

Philips becomes the sixth semiconductor manufacturer to license SPARC.
Other licensees are Bipolar Integrated Technology (BIT); Cypress
Semiconductor, through its Ross Technology subsidiary; Fujitsu
Microelectronics; LSI Logic; and Texas Instruments.  Each company
brings its own expertise to developing a range of SPARC CPUs in process
technologies from CMOS and emitter-coupled logic (ECL) to BiCMOS and
gallium arsenide.

 Other Philips Divisions To Use SPARC

Philips Components was responsible for 18.6 percent of the $28 billion
1988 revenues of the multinational parent company.  The components
division supplies integrated circuits to the rest of the corporation,
such as the consumer electronics division (marketing U.S. brands such
as Magnavox), the domestic appliances division and the professional
products and systems division.

N. V. Philips is the 22nd largest industrial company in the world.  The
firm's Philips Components division ranks as the 10th largest
semiconductor supplier worldwide.  Philips has operations in more than
60 countries.

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.


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Press Contact:  Marty Coleman-(415) 336-6543