The Sun Partner Community for HPC provides global partners with immediate access to a comprehensive portfolio of Sun's HPC solutions, including its Sun Fire x64 (x86, 64-bit) systems powered by AMD Opteron processors - among the industry's highest performing, most energy efficient systems that help customers solve highly complex scientific and engineering compute-problems. Additionally, members of the Sun Partner Community for HPC will be able to leverage a comprehensive set of Sun's sales tools and training programmes. By collaborating with key partners, system integrators and technology providers, Sun is creating an HPC ecosystem that provides customers with access to tightly integrated solutions and expertise that eliminate the need for customers to deploy and integrate point-product offerings on their own.

For example, several partners are qualified to sell and deliver the Sun N1 Grid Engine software, enabling enterprises to significantly increase the utilization of compute resources for increased productivity in more powerful grids. A number of recent ISV ports to the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) have also bolstered Sun's HPC stack.

"The Sun Partner Community for HPC is designed to meet the unique computing needs of our HPC customers by removing the complexity and cost typically associated with the purchase, deployment and support of leading edge technologies through a tight collaboration with leading HPC partners and system integrators", stated Bjorn Andersson, director of HPC and Grid computing at Sun Microsystems. "Flexibility and choice are the cornerstones of our HPC solutions, and Sun recognizes that partner participation is a critical element in providing customers with the right set of tools and technologies to further innovate in the market. By collaborating with HPC partners around the world, Sun is accelerating innovation and extending customer's access to industry-leading technology."

"As a global HPC solution provider I am looking forward to joining the Sun Partner Community for HPC, where I am expecting to build on our joint success with Sun at Tokyo Institute of Technology", stated Makoto Tsukakoshi, managing director of NEC High Performance Computing Europe. "Sun has a compelling product and technology portfolio for HPC that perfectly complements our own offering and enables us to give more flexibility and choice to our customers."

"We are excited to be part of the Sun Partner Community for HPC", stated Hakon Bugge, founder and chief technology officer of Scali. "With Sun's innovative Solaris 10 OS for x86 and x64 platforms, and Sun N1 Grid Engine software, Sun is taking the right action to gain a leadership position in HPC. Our customers will benefit from the expanded flexibility of running Scali products on a choice of Sun hardware platforms, for both Solaris 10 and Linux operating systems. From a business standpoint, that's a train we need to be on."