Sun Joins Industry Leading Display and Software Vendors to Broaden Market
By Offering More Affordable High-End, Immersive Visualization Technology
NEW ORLEANS, SIGGRAPH 2000, July 25 /PRNewswire/ --
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced a series of new products
and key vendor relationships that will dramatically expand the immersive
visualization market by making collaborative visualization centers more
affordable. Sun announced that leading immersive display vendors Trimension
Systems, Panoram Technology and MechDyne Corp., are now supported on Sun(TM)
platforms. In addition, the premier immersive, software utility vendors,
VRCO, vrcom, Muse Technologies and Teneo Computing also announced availability
of their software on Sun platforms.
The collaborative agreements come on the heels of Sun's announcement that
Sun Expert3D, a high-performance graphics accelerator board, is now supported
on the Sun Enterprise(TM) 450 and Sun Enterprise 420R Workgroup Servers. A
Sun Enterprise 450 with three Sun Expert3D boards, driving a large screen
display, provides high resolution and 3D graphics functionality at less than
half the cost of some competitive solutions. Sun's new graphics solution
allows workgroups to view images across multiple displays at resolutions of up
to 5760 by 1200 pixels in 3D, or up to 3840 by 1024 pixels in 3D stereo. As a
result, workgroups are able to collaborate easily, viewing large data sets
from a single system in a group setting. The availability of affordable,
collaborative visualization centers will enable manufacturing workgroups in
the automotive and aerospace industry, and seismic interpreters in the
Oil & Gas industry to increase their collaborative engineering efforts.
"Customers increasingly want to use visual collaboration technologies to
improve their decision making and time-to-market efforts," said Fred Kohout,
director of product marketing, Workstation Products Group at Sun Microsystems.
"Sun platforms combined with the best of breed, immersive display and software
utility vendors, will make this technology more affordable to deploy across
the enterprise."
The large screen displays will enable manufacturing workgroups to review
complex designs at full scale and in real time, resulting in fewer design
modifications and lower costs. Seismic interpreters in the oil & gas industry
will be able to view massive seismic data sets as interactive images,
dramatically increasing productivity for interpreting the subsurface,
examining drilling sites, running reservoir analyses, and designing downstream
facilities, thus reducing interpretive time from months to hours and lowering
overhead costs. Research groups will be able to use these immersive,
visualization technologies to gain insights in molecular modeling,
computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis.
The collaborative visualization centers driven by Sun Enterprise 450 with
three Expert3D boards is part of a full range of cost-effective immersive
visualization solutions for individuals, small teams and large workgroups.
These solutions include multi-panel desktop displays, immersive work benches,
stand alone viewing stations and large, flat and curve screen displays.
Sun has further reduced the cost of deployment of these visualization
environments because existing OpenGL(R)-based applications can be displayed
across multiple graphics displays, without modification. In addition,
applications using Sun's Java 3D(TM) technology can be deployed on a variety
of visualization environments with no modification, while scaling in
performance on multiple graphics frame-buffers, because of Java 3D's flexible
viewing model and multi-threading, multi-pipe capabilities.
Cost & Availability
The Sun Expert3D technology support for the Sun Enterprise 450 Workgroup
Server is available now. Costs are determined by customer configuration
needs. The price for a typical system*, including one Sun Enterprise
450 Workgroup Server with three Sun Expert3D boards is currently listed at
$53,815. To learn more, please visit http://www.sun.com/desktop/index.html.
* Sun Enterprise 450 Workgroup Server & 3 Sun Expert3D Graphics
Accelerator Boards
4 CPU's Maximum (400MHz)
4GB Maximum RAM
SPECint 17.4
SPECfp 25.7 (Three CPU)
10 PCI I/O Slots
2 x 18.2GB Hard Drive
64MB Texture memory
64MB Frame buffer memory
1920x1200x75Hz Max 3D Resolution
1280x1024x112Hz Max Stereo Resolution
32-bit Z-Buffer
3 Expert3D boards installed in system
w/ 1920x1200x75Hz / Expert3D
6.0 M Triangles/sec performance
140M Pixel/sec Peak texture fill rate
System Cost: $53,815 list*
Partner Testimonials for Sun Visual Collaboration Solutions
Panoram Technologies
"With Sun's expansive user base and strong ISV Support, our partnership
with Sun is sure to boost, expand and strengthen the burgeoning collaborative
visualization market."
Theo Mayer
President and CEO
Panoram Technologies
818-504-0714
Trimension Systems
"Sun's new graphics technology is empowering the Sun user base to use the
power of Trimension's leading VR and Visualization systems for the first time.
This development will give designers increased insight and shorter time to
market and will provide researchers with the ability to process more data,
giving all performance users a better return from their digital assets."
Blair Parkin
Managing Director and CEO
Trimension Systems
44-0-1444-480-100
MechDyne
"We are thrilled to work with Sun as a Visual Collaboration Solutions
Partner. The possibilities with this partnership are infinite. Coupling our
technology with Sun's Expert3D Graphics hardware gives our clients an added
element of flexibility at a very reasonable cost."
James Gruening
Vice President
MechDyne Corp.
641-754-4649
MUSE Technologies
"Sun's exciting new Visual Collaboration Center will provide an excellent
platform for the sophisticated, collaborative visualization solutions
available from the MUSE family of companies."
David Rosen
Vice President of Marketing and Business Development
MUSE Technologies, Inc.
800-711-3899
VRCO
"VRCO is excited to be part of the unveiling of Sun's Visual Collaboration
Center. The combination of VRCO's collaborative visualization toolkits and
applications with Sun's hardware solutions provides a cost-effective standard
for creating multi-site virtual environments. Our customers will benefit from
more rapid decision making, reduction in product development costs and
increased productivity."
Glen H. Wheless, Ph.D
Executive Vice President
VRCO, Inc.
757-286-3191
vrcom
"Our world leading soft Virtual Design 2 is already the standard for
virtual reality at leading automotive original equipment manufacturers. With
the Sun Visual Collaboration Center, we now see a big chance to open the door
in virtual reality for small and medium enterprises in the supply chain. The
availability of Virtual Design 2 on Sun Solaris provides our customers with
high-performance, cost-effective solutions. Through our partnership with Sun
Microsystems we also expect to expand our customer base in the United States
dramatically."
Heike Ziegler
CEO
vrcom
49-6151-30083-0
Teneo Computing
"Teneo provides 3D Touch solutions to our customers in medicine as well as
oil & gas exploration. Since Sun is the leading supplier of workstations to
these industries, it makes perfect sense to port the PHANTOM Haptic Interface
and GHOST to the Sun Solaris platform."
John Ranta
Principal
Teneo Computing
jranta@teneocomp.com
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The
Computer(TM)" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc., to its position as a
leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that
power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to dot-com their businesses.
With $15.7 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than
170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com .
NOTE: Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, Java, Java 3D, Enterprise and
"The Network Is The Computer," are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun
Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
CONTACTS: Frank Smith of Sun Microsystems, Inc., 650-786-7215, or
frank.smith@corp.sun.com; or Brad Goodson of Burson-Marsteller, 415-591-4061,
or brad_goodson@sfo.bm.com, for Sun Microsystems, Inc.
SOURCE Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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Related links:
http://sun.com
CONTACT:
Frank Smith of Sun Microsystems, Inc.,
650-786-7215, or frank.smith@corp.sun.com; or Brad Goodson of
Burson-Marsteller, 415-591-4061, or brad_goodson@sfo.bm.com, for
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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