TOSHIBA TO BUILD LOW-COST SPARC COMPUTERS BASED ON UNIX

Also To Include OPEN LOOK Graphical Interface; Systems Expected To
Attract PC-Class Applications


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.   May 30, 1989   Sun Microsystems and Toshiba
Corporation signed an agreement under which Toshiba will develop
low-cost, high-performance computers based on the openly licensed SPARC
TM  RISC microprocessor architecture and SunOS TM  UNIX    operating
system.  In addition to licensing SPARC and SunOS, Toshiba will include
the intuitive OPEN LOOK TM  graphical user interface in its new
computers.  OPEN LOOK was developed by Sun and AT&T.  According to
Toshiba, its first SPARC systems will be available in early 1990.

Toshiba will build a new class of high-performance, low-cost computers
that take advantage of the power of the SPARC architecture and the UNIX
operating system while being easy to use.  Toshiba expects to ship
these systems in the kind of volumes that will attract many mainstream
PC applications.  The company will utilize its experience as one of the
leading Japanese PC manufacturers, taking advantage of its extensive,
worldwide distribution network.

Toshiba will purchase microprocessors from one or more of the five
semiconductor vendors licensed to develop SPARC chips and will license
from Sun a complete software environment for SPARC/UNIX based
computers.  This includes SunOS, the OpenWindows TM application
environment (made up of OPEN LOOK, the X11/NeWS TM  window system and
the XView TM toolkit), ONC/NFS TM  networking software, and Fortran and
C compilers.

Ongoing Relationship

Toshiba will be making the first PC-class SPARC computers developed in
Japan.  In 1982, Toshiba started marketing the first Japanese version
of the UNIX operating system, under license from AT&T.  Three years
later, Toshiba began selling the first Japanese versions of Sun
Microsystems' 68000-based workstations under an OEM agreement.  In
addition, Toshiba's 32-bit laptop computers, marketed worldwide,
support the UNIX operating system.

A longtime customer of Sun, Toshiba will be developing its new SPARC
computers on Sun workstations.  Toshiba will utilize products such as
SPARCsim TM  -- an architectural simulator -- along with other SPARC
development tools.

According to Joichi Aoi, president and CEO of Toshiba Corporation, "Sun
and Toshiba are extending their relationship through this agreement to
develop a new kind of SPARC system.  Toshiba is committed to being an
early entrant in the SPARC-compatible systems market."

Sun has been encouraging the growth of this market by making the
essential hardware and software components needed for easy-to-use
SPARC/ UNIX systems openly available.  In addition, Sun's SPARCware TM
program is rapidly increasing the base of third-party application
software for SPARC systems.  At 500 packages, SPARCware is already the
largest base of RISC software in the industry.

SPARC Market Expanding Rapidly

According to Scott McNealy, president and CEO of Sun Microsystems, the
availability of SPARCware was an important factor in Toshiba's choice
of SPARC and UNIX for small, high-performance, low-cost computers.
"With SPARC, companies can develop products quickly and be assured of a
large and growing market," he said.  "And in turn, SPARC's emergence as
the open computing standard for the 1990s will attract even more
software developers -- exponentially -- to this general-purpose
platform."

Sun's licensing of SPARC and its essential system software marks the
first time a computer company has promoted the development of
compatible systems.  "With SPARC, companies like Toshiba can choose the
features, performance and price they need from among several compatible
SPARC manufacturers.  Proprietary RISCs cannot offer this kind of
flexibility, nor this level of application support," said McNealy.

Toshiba is a highly diversified computer and electronics company whose
sales exceeded $30 billion worldwide in 1988.

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 contacts:
Hi-Tech Public Relations, Marty Coleman (415) 336-6543
Toshiba Corp.  Yuji Wakayama 011-813-457-2105