"Here comes the Sun"...
They talk about ISV's supporting Sun's new family of PCI-bus Ultra(TM) workstations.
Innovacom announced one of these didn't they?
Although Sun mentions MPEG Encoding they don't mention Innovacom.
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Sun Microsystems Powers Technical Computing Solutions; Over Forty New
Independent Software Vendors Sign With Sun
04/22/98
Business Wire
(Copyright (c) 1998, Business Wire)
PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 22, 1998--Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced today that over forty new independent software vendors in electronic design automation, digital content creation, geographic information systems, and product data management have chosen to join forces with Sun in the past eight months.
In addition, a number of independent hardware vendors have announced products for Sun's new family of PCI-bus Ultra(TM) workstations. These companies join the over 500 technical computing independent hardware and software vendors already developing applications for Sun's Solaris(TM) operating environment.
"Sun's recent advances in high performance computing, graphics, networking, and overall price/performance have allowed us to continue to grow our presence in the technical markets," said Mark Tolliver, vice president of market development at Sun. "As the market evolves, new hardware and software vendors are realizing that Sun offers the best set of products, performance, and support for today's technical customers. And our 100 percent binary compatibility across the entire product line protects their software investments as they and their customers grow."
Electronic Design Automation: Sun Gets It Done In EDA, designs with millions of gates and distributed design teams are driving electronics manufacturers to leverage their information processing resources by building "compute ranches" that take advantage of every processor cycle. EDA applications are moving toward 64-bit, threaded operation to handle the soaring increases in design complexity and radically shortened time to market cycle in this industry.
Because of these market needs, UNIX(R) will continue to dominate. The EDA Consortium, in its quarterly market facts report, surveys all the major suppliers of EDA design tools. For the past ten years, EDAC has reported that UNIX licenses account for approximately 90 percent of software license revenues from EDA customers. This number has not changed significantly in the past two years, in spite of the number of "PC workstations" that have entered the market.
Along with its 16-year history of working with EDA vendors, Sun brings the 64-bit architecture and multi-threading capability of the Solaris operating environment to this market. Sun also brings its expertise in building "compute ranches" that can share the processing load among a number of workstations and servers, taking advantage of idle machine cycles to shorten design verification and analysis. Consequently, the rate of EDA software vendor sign-up has been tremendous, averaging one per week since the beginning of 1997.
Among the ISVs who have most recently signed with Sun are Ambit (logic synthesis), Leda Systems (intellectual property development), Simplex Solutions, Inc. (deep sub-micron analysis tools), Ultima Interconnect Technology (deep sub-micron interconnect tools and technologies), and Virtual Silicon Technology (physical libraries and SIP).
"Sun is an excellent partner for Simplex," stated Jan Willis, vice president of business development at Simplex. "Fire & Ice's unique full-chip capabilities take advantage of Sun's 64-bit architecture. Design teams can combine their 'compute ranches' with Fire & Ice to improve extraction throughput and maximize the size of designs they can extract, resulting in the highest capacity full-chip 3D interconnect extraction solution on the market."
Digital Content Creation: Hot Hardware and Great Price/Performance
Traditionally a stronghold of Silicon Graphics Inc. and Apple Computer, the digital content creation market has started to find what it needs in Sun's new PCI bus-based workstations and Elite 3D graphics. Vendors such as Electric Image, MediaWare Solutions, Newtek, Nichimen Graphics, and Xaos Tools have chosen to port to the Sun(TM) platform because they can offer their customers all the features found in much higher-priced systems at a much more affordable price point. For example, Sun's Ultra(TM) 60 system, starting at $20,880, offers 35 percent greater floating point performance at less than half the price of SGI's Octane system.
"Porting our latest 3D modeler to the Solaris platform was a natural choice for us," said Pinakin Katbamna, director of marketing at Nichimen Graphics, a leading software tools provider to the 3D interactive content market. "The strength and stability of Sun's hardware, combined with their meticulous support, helps solidify our leadership position with the most powerful, intuitive and value-conscious solutions available for interactive content developers."
Geographic Information Systems and Advanced Visualization Techniques
Users of GIS and advanced visualization need to "find it first, identify it first, and act on it first." The petroleum industry, DoD users, and federal resource management agencies have traditionally utilized Sun-based GIS environments to assist in decision making. Commercial markets like telecommunications and finance are beginning to take advantage of geospatial processes to find new markets and optimize coverage, analyze competitive threats, and assess and improve business processes.
Sun's superior database performance, excellent graphics/imaging, and balanced throughput architecture, coupled with new price structuring from the Ultra desktops to the Sun(TM) Enterprise(TM) servers has attracted new software developers to exploit opportunities in telecommunications, finance, and government. Additionally, Java(TM) technology improves collaboration between content creators and allows access to map data anywhere, on any client. This represents a competitive advantage in telecommunications and other commercial markets, as well as in defense & military intelligence applications. ISVs porting new applications to Sun in the GIS/advanced visualization market include Autometric, Incorporated, Camber Corporation, Facet Decision Systems, and Sedona GeoServices, a division of Scangraphics, Inc.
"With our product going to a web-based distribution format, Sun's hardware and software are a clear winner as a platform for Facet," said Jim Maynard, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Facet. "Not only do we benefit from the robustness and stability of Solaris, but we're also getting great engineering support from Sun. And we're very excited about the promise of Java 3D as a performance platform for visualization."
Product Data Management: Java Technology Makes It Work
In product data management, adoption of Java technology has been rapid, with most major PDM vendors now offering a client interface based on Sun's Java technology. Maxim I/T, the most recent addition to Sun's PDM ISV alliances, recently introduced the first PDM suite written completely in the Java programming language. Called Mission-PDM, this product takes the trend of Java technology adoption to the next level. Using Java technology to build the entire application gives several advantages, including ease of adding remote servers of any platform to the PDM network, rapid development of application functionality, and increased ability to give non-technical personnel access to PDM data.
"A Java client/server architecture was an easy decision for us," said Steve Selfors, vice president of product development, Maxim I/T Inc. "Our customers want to reduce design time and product cost through real-time collaboration with their partners and suppliers. Since Java technology enables remote access through existing Internet infrastructure and across disparate hardware platforms, our Java technology-based Mission-PDM solution is the most efficient link to manufacturers, partners, and suppliers."
PCI Enhancement Product Offerings Proliferating
Since the introduction of Sun's first PCI-bus workstation in August 1997, a number of independent hardware vendors have developed PCI cards to handle tasks such as MPEG encoding, HDTV I/O, voice recognition, high resolution image capture for digital video cameras, and graphics accelerators. Among the vendors now offering PCI enhancement products for Sun workstations are Adaptec, Inc., Aurora Technologies, Bit3, DGM&S, Dialogic Corporation, Digi International, DVS Video Systems, Inc., Engineering Design Team, General Signal Networks, Ikon Corp., National Instruments, SCM Microsystems, Tech-Source, Inc., and VisionTech, Ltd. "The Solaris operating environment is a natural choice to accommodate our low cost, broadcast quality MPEG -2 encoder, because of its robustness, stability, and scalability," said Leonid Yavits, VP of Engineering at VisionTech, Ltd., a leading developer of MPEG -2 digital video products. "We are proud to be a part of Sun's effort to provide its customers with high quality MPEG -2 encoding and decoding products." |
