Press Release

New Vega™ 2 Family Of Compute Appliances Deliver Unparalleled Performance, Scalability, Response Time, and Power Efficiency Benefits

Mountain View, Calif. – Dec. 4, 2006 – Azul Systems, the award-winning leader of enterprise server appliances for business critical Java™ applications, today announced that it has achieved a world record single instance scalability result for the SPECjbb2005® benchmark using a compute appliance based on its newly announced Vega 2 processors. The next-generation systems, with up to an unprecedented 768 processor cores and 768GB of memory in a single system, delivered the industry’s highest single instance score of 872,972 SPECjbb2005 bops and 872,972 SPECjbb2005 bops /JVM demonstrating the unique ability to address the demanding needs of enterprise business critical Java applications. The new systems further enhance the proven capability of Vega 1 systems with faster response times and higher capacity at lower cost points, making them optimally positioned as the platform of choice for shared services compute infrastructure for Java and J2EE applications. (To read about outstanding industry support Azul has gained to date, view today’s announcement at http://www.azulsystems.com/press/120406_market_support.htm)

“The Vega 2 family of Azul Compute Appliances represents a major advance for enterprise servers and is a critical technology required for customers who must eliminate the scaling bottlenecks and inconsistent performance they otherwise experience when running transaction-intensive Java applications on general-purpose servers,” said Scott Sellers, chief operating officer and co-founder of Azul Systems. “Powered by our unique Vega 2 processor, Azul offers the industry’s only solutions with a Java-optimized instruction set, hardware-assisted garbage collection, and support for optimistic thread concurrency. These unique features eliminate application pauses and scaling limitations due to memory management and lock contention overhead inherent in Java programs. The result is the industry’s first and only platform to deliver the speed and consistency enterprises need to use Java as the basis for their most business critical and demanding applications.”

"Azul Systems Vega 2-based Compute Appliances will help companies take greater advantage of Java capabilities," said Jerald Murphy, senior vice president and director of research at Robert Frances Group. “The design of Azul server appliances helps to overcome many resource limitations that have prevented traditional systems from being able to optimize Java -based performance. Azul demonstrates unique server thought leadership and its capabilities should be reviewed closely.”

Number One Platform for Business Critical Java

With the large scale and complexity of today’s applications, companies are under constant pressure to ensure consistent, unfaltering performance regardless of load. (View further details here http://www.azulsystems.com/press/120406_vega2.htm). Azul enables transparent, massively scalable server infrastructure for Java applications to ensure that performance and SLA requirements are met to support the business priorities of today’s most demanding enterprise environments. Azul delivers virtualized compute capabilities with high capacity and utilization at a fraction of the cost of traditional computing models. It does this all without requiring changes to applications, middleware, operating systems or existing servers. The new Vega 2 systems come in two different configurations:

• Model 3210 includes 96 processor cores and 48 GB of system memory in a 5U rack-mountable form factor, and consumes 580 Watts typically.
• Model 3220 includes 192 processor cores and up to 192 GB of system memory in a rack-mountable 5U form factor, and consumes 1000 Watts typically.

The new systems are designed to deliver unparalleled benefits in the areas of high performance, scalability, ultra fast response times, and power efficiency:

• Performance: The Vega 2 systems are designed to deliver high performance for the most demanding business critical workloads. The new systems consistently perform significantly higher than competing server technologies such as Sun’s T2000 server or commodity servers. In Trade6, a benchmark which models a financial services trading platform, the new 3220 systems outperform Sun’s T2000 by a factor of 6.7X and a dual-socket, dual-core AMD Opteron based server by a factor of 5.6X.¹ Using XMLMark to test streaming XML parsers, the 3220 demonstrated results 10.8X higher than Sun’s T2000 and 7.6X higher than a dual-socket, dual-core AMD Opteron based server. ²

• Scalability: Running a single JVM instance of SPECjbb2005, a de facto industry standard for measuring server-side Java performance, systems based on the Azul Vega 2 processor achieved the industry’s highest single instance result of 872,972 SPECjbb2005 bops and 872,972 SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM.*

• Consistent, Fast Application Response Times: The Azul first generation Compute Appliances based on the Vega 1 processor have demonstrated in the most demanding customer environments the ability to dramatically reduce application pause times associated with Java garbage collection by orders of magnitude compared to traditional servers. Systems based on the Vega 2 processor further extend this capability, with peak pause times reduced by 64% on XMLMark and 36% on Trade6 as compared to Vega 1 systems.

• Industry-Leading Power Efficiency: With an architecture designed and optimized for power efficiency, Azul is able to deliver server appliances which integrate 96 processor cores but consume only 580 Watts typically. 192 processor core configurations consume only 1000 Watts typically. The new 3220 systems achieve stunning 3.0X better performance-per-watt results as compared to Sun’s T2000, and similar 2.3X better performance-per-watt results as compared to dual-socket systems based on AMD’s dual-core processors. ¹ ² ³

Availability and Pricing:

With prices starting at $49,995 US Dollars, the 3200 series compute appliances are available immediately in the Americas and Europe, and will be available Spring 2007 in Asia Pacific. Higher end appliances will be available worldwide in 2007.

* SPEC and SPECjbb2005 are Registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC). Competitive claims reflect results published on www.spec.org as of November 30, 2006. For the latest SPECjbb2005 results visit http://www.spec.org/jbb2005/results/res2007q1/.

¹ Trade6 results: Azul Systems Compute Appliance 3220 (4 Vega 2 processors, 192 cores) 6,151 TPS; Sun T2000 (8 cores @ 1.2 GHz) 924 TPS; 2-socket dual core AMD Opteron 285 (4 cores @ 2.6 GHz) 1095 TPS

² XMLMark1.2 results based on streaming parser workload (SAX1, SAX2 and SAX3): Azul Systems Compute Appliance 3220 (4 Vega 2 processors, 192 cores) SAX1: 5085 TPS, SAX2: 2520 TPS, SAX3: 1163 TPS (average SAX: 2923 TPS); Sun T2000 (8 cores @ 1.2 GHz) SAX1: 466 TPS, SAX2: 228 TPS, SAX3: 117 TPS (average SAX: 270 TPS); 2-socket dual core AMD Opteron 285 (4 cores @ 2.6 GHz) SAX1: 696 TPS, SAX2: 301 TPS, SAX3: 155 TPS (average SAX: 384 TPS)

³ Azul model 3220 consumes 1000 Watts typically under load. Sun T2000 estimated to consume 275 Watts typically under load. Dual-socket, dual-core Opteron servers estimated to consume 300 Watts typically under load.

About Azul Systems
Azul Systems is a global provider of enterprise server appliances that deliver compute and memory resources as a shared network service for transaction-intensive applications, such as those built on the Java™ platform. Our family of Azul Compute Appliances enables transparent, massively scalable infrastructure that supports the business priorities of today’s most demanding enterprise environments and delivers increased capabilities, capacity and utilization at a fraction of the cost of traditional computing models. More information on Azul Systems can be found at http://www.azulsystems.com.

Legal Notices
Azul Systems and Azul are registered trademarks, and the Azul arch logo is a trademark of Azul Systems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All Java based trademarks and their logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. SPEC, SPECjbb, and the "performance chart" SPEC logo are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Other marks are the property of their respective owners and are used here only for identification purposes.

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