Sun Powers Largest Compute Cluster in Latin America

Sao Paulo University Project Built on Sun Fire X4150 Delivers 23.2
TeraFlops Across 7 Campuses
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(Business Wire)--
Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:JAVA) today announced Sao Paulo
University (UNESP) has chosen Sun to power the largest computing
cluster in Latin America which will span across seven different sites
in Sao Paulo State. The "UNESP Computer Capacity Integration
(GridUNESP)" compute cluster, based on Sun Microsystems technology,
will give research groups in the University access to the highest
levels of processing capacity and data storage capacity to be used for
particle physics, genetics, meteorology, medicine, and other areas of
scientific investigation.

The central cluster of systems, which will be installed at the new
UNESP campus in Barra Funda, Sao Paulo - will have 2048 processing
nuclei and a compute capacity of 23.2 TFlops. The complete system
which is made up of the central cluster and seven others will total
33.32 TFlops. GridUNESP will have a high speed connection to the North
American Internet2 by means of the MetroSampa Network -- which
inter-connects educational, cultural, and research institutions in the
metropolitan region of Sao Paulo -- and also to the Open Science Grid,
which integrates computer resources in fifty sites across the United
States, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Latin America

The selection of Sun Microsystems of Brazil for GridUNESP was made
in strict compliance with the requirements of the Tenders and
Contracts Law, and was preceded by a wide consultation with different
companies specializing in high performance computing (HPC). Definition
of the specifications and analysis of the technical and commercial
bids was monitored by a multi-institutional commission, made up of
professionals who specialize in HPC. "Sun was selected as it showed
the best technical expertise and the best price from the bids
submitted," said GridUNESP's general coordinator, Sergio Ferraz
Novaes, professor of the Theoretical Physics Institute (IFT) at UNESP.

GridUNESP will have centralized administration, operation, and
maintenance, and will be accessible to any researcher in the
University. According to Novaes, the project will deal with research
areas that require processing, analysis, and storage of a large amount
of data, such as genetic sequencing, weather forecasting, molecular
and cellular modeling, reconstruction of medical images, development
of new materials, quantum chemistry, large-scale numerical
simulations, and high energy physics, among others.

The cost of the project, at around $3.1 million USD, was financed
by the Ministry of Science and Technology, via the Studies and
Projects Finance Plan (FINEP). The computational infrastructure, which
consists of a central cluster and seven other secondary clusters, will
be spread amongst the following campuses: Araraquara, Bauru, Botucatu,
Ilha Solteira, Rio Claro, Sao Jose do Rio Preto and Sao Paulo.

"With its multi-campus structure, UNESP has the profile of an
institution that could benefit greatly from this layout. A network
that interconnects the principal processing and data storage centers
in the University will allow an equitable distribution of these
resources, allowing virtually everybody to access a computational
infrastructure that would be unavailable or extremely unbalanced if
set up another way," explains Novaes.

"The progress of our research will be helped in terms of speed of
calculation and availability of memory. It will also facilitate
interaction between the different theoretical research groups,"
affirms Elson Longo, professor of the Institute of Chemistry (IQ) at
the Araraquara campus, and also coordinator of the Multidisciplinary
Centre for Ceramic Material Development.

GridUNESP will give the University the capacity to integrate major
international projects in the area of Grid computing, according to
Gastao Krein, Director of IFT, at the Sao Paulo campus. For physician
Ney Lemke, of the Institute of Bioscience (IB) at the Botucatu campus,
studies in the areas of biology and medical physics will be greatly
enhanced. "With the computing capacity of GridUNESP, research
calculation times will be reduced, which will allow us to carry out
more detailed studies at a faster pace."

For Adriano Mauro Cansian, coordinator of the Safety research
Laboratory of the Institute of Biosciences, Arts and Exact Sciences
(IBILCE), at the Sao Jose do Rio Preto campus, the project to detect
attacks on large-scale computer network infrastructure, on which he
works with his team, will benefit from the processing and data storage
capacity. "We also believe that the grid will allow more flexible
processing in carrying out the analyses that are intended to detect
attacks in real time."

According to Carlos Thomaz, high performance computing specialist,
Sun Microsystems of Brazil, the GridUNESP project represents a new
standard for the Brazilian academic community. "The project consists
of a combination of interconnected clusters, forming a computation
grid along the lines of those in Europe and North America. Challenges
such as this are not dealt with just by systems, but also by using an
infrastructure specifically defined to meet the needs of UNESP,
encompassing software, hardware, and principally service solutions."

Joaquim Merino, Sun Microsystems sales executive, states that "The
GridUNESP project is a pioneer in the implementation of a
computational grid that connects the largest research centers in the
world, such as the Open Science Grid (OSG). We expect this project to
be not only a great success for UNESP, but also for the whole
Brazilian scientific community."

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global
marketplace. Guided by a singular vision -- "The Network Is The
Computer(TM)" -- Sun drives network participation through shared
innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can
be found in more than 100 countries an on the Web at http://sun.com.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, The Network is the Computer
and Sun Blade are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun
Microsystems, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other
countries.

Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Vanessa Helfenstein, +551194306083
vanessa.helfenstein@sun.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008