Business Services Industry

Sun Announces Immediate Availability of Sun WorkShop 5.0 Integrated Development Environment

Business Wire, Feb 16, 1999

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 16, 1999--

New Version Provides 64-Bit Development, ANSI C Support and

Faster Performance

Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of its new release of Sun WorkShop(tm), the integrated application development tools optimized for the Solaris operating environment.

Sun WorkShop 5.0 includes Sun(tm) Visual WorkShop(tm) C 5.0 and Sun Performance WorkShop(tm) Fortran 5.0 software to give developers an advantage when building scalable, high performance 32- and 64-bit enterprise-class applications. Sun WorkShop also allows developers to create reusable, portable ANSI C applications, while dramatically increasing the performance of existing code. Sun WorkShop is available immediately for download at http://www.sun.com/workshop.> "With over 8,000 downloads since the Developer Release of Sun WorkShop 5.0 in October 1998, we are delivering on our promise of high-performance enterprise application development tools," said Joe Keller, director of Developer Environments and Tools, Sun Microsystems. "Developers are eager to take advantage of the increased capacity and performance of 64-bit technology, along with the power and portability of the new ANSI C standard."

Sun WorkShop provides:

-- Comprehensive, highly productive environment for mixed language

development in C, C and Fortran. -- Full support for 32-bit and 64-bit development. -- Easy migration from 32-bit applications to 64-bit to facilitate

scaling from desktop clients to datacenter servers. -- Year 2000 compliance to preserve development investments into the

new millennium. -- Strategic, long-term investment for application development.

"Users continue to need in-house applications that can take full advantage of the latest and greatest 64-bit hardware and operating environments from suppliers such as Sun," said Brian Kalita, senior analyst at Aberdeen group. "Sun's latest release of Visual WorkShop C and Performance WorkShop Fortran shows that Sun recognizes this key user need and is meeting it effectively, helping developers to deliver the full scalability benefits of 64-bit platforms to legacy programs."

Sun Visual WorkShop 5.0 C provides:

-- Newly-approved ANSI/ISO C standard extends the flexibility and

portability of C . -- Highest performance environment for C/C development for the

Solaris product line. -- Optimized C and C compilers for high-performance server

applications. -- Client/server GUI builder for linking server code to client

software. -- Memory monitor to help ensure mission-critical applications run

reliably 24 hours a day. -- Backwards compatibility to migrate some older C code to the new

standard.

Sun Performance WorkShop 5.0 Fortran provides:

-- Significant performance improvements for all applications,

especially Fortran 90. -- New routines and optimizations for the Sun Performance Library. -- High-performance Fortran compilation system. -- 64-bit capabilities

High-Performance Computing

Sun Performance WorkShop 5.0 augments Sun's high-performance computing (HPC) server product line bringing Supercomputer-class performance and capability to the SPARC(TM) platform. With the new 64-bit Fortran environment, developers can define arrays more than 4 billion bytes long, allowing huge datasets to be read into memory for processing. This dramatic increase in capacity, combined with overall improvements in performance and capability, means that Sun users can now solve the most difficult problems on SPARC servers.

"Sun's dedication to the high-performance computing market is evident in this latest release of the Sun Performance WorkShop Fortran," said Walt Brainerd, president of Unicomp, Inc. and noted expert on Fortran programming. "By implementing 64-bit application development in the Performance WorkShop Fortran product, they have enabled a new class of applications for the SPARC/Solaris platform."

Pricing And Availability

Sun WorkShop software, including Sun Visual WorkShop C 5.0 and Sun Performance WorkShop Fortran 5.0 software, is available immediately for purchase from Sun resellers and online on the Web at http://www.sun.com/workshop.> Sun Visual WorkShop C and Sun Performance WorkShop Fortran software are each currently available starting at $1895 for personal user licenses. Sun Visual WorkShop C 5.0 and Sun Performance WorkShop Fortran 5.0 software are expected to both be available for shipment later this month. Licenses for shareable network versions and large customer sites are also available. Customer upgrades and competitive trade-ups currently start at under $1,000. For more information go to http://www.sun.com/workshop.> Pricing and availability subject to change without notice.

Sun WorkShop 5.0 supports versions 2.5.1, 2.6 and 7 of the Solaris operating environment software. Solaris 7 is required for 64-bit support.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision, "The Network Is The Computer(TM)," has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW), to its position as a leading provider of high quality hardware, software and services for establishing enterprise-wide intranets and expanding the power of the Internet. With more than $10.5 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 150 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com.