SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jun 02, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) ----Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq:JAVA) today announced the online release of the 3D animation film "Big Buck Bunny" rendered using Network.com's Sun(TM) Grid compute utility service. The movie is created using open source 3D software suite Blender, available from blender.org as well as Network.com Application Catalog, a collection of online grid-enabled applications that can be used in an on-demand basis with "Click and Run" ease. Additionally, Network.com is one of the web hosting locations for the online release, and the movie can be downloaded from http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/download.

"The Big Buck Bunny movie project demonstrates that the barriers to entry in the 3D animation world can be lowered tremendously using on-demand computing platforms. Even though the Blender team did not have support of a big studio, they succeeded with the community support, an open source rendering software and an on-demand computing platform," said David Folk, Group Manager of Network.com Marketing, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "With a growing collection of applications, a host of new developer tools and worldwide availability, Network.com is attracting more developers and end-users to use, build and share new services for a wide range of industries."

The movie promotes open content creation as it is not only developed using open source software but also distributed under an open license that gives artists free access to the entire studio database of assets and files used to make the movie. "The primary intent of the movie was to stimulate the development of open source 3D software, but the quality of Big Buck Bunny on an artistic level as well as on technical ingenuity is what you would expect from large animation studios," said Ton Roosendaal, producer and Blender Institute director. "We needed over fifty thousand CPU-hours of compute time, and Sun's Network.com grid service provided us a very powerful platform where we could use hundreds of CPUs simultaneously to significantly speed up the movie rendering process without needing to own the compute infrastructure."

About "Big Buck Bunny"

Big Buck Bunny is a comedy about a well-tempered rabbit "Big Buck," who finds his day spoiled by the rude actions of the forest bullies, three rodents. In the typical 1950s cartoon tradition, Big Buck then prepares for the rodents in a comical revenge. The creative team for the movie was brought together by the Blender Institute from all over the world, including Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and USA. In addition to the online release, Big Buck Bunny has been released in 35mm film format on DVD and Blu-ray. For more information, please visit http://www.bigbuckbunny.org.

About Network.com

Sun's Network.com provides access to compute infrastructure on a pay-per-use basis via its Sun Grid compute utility at $1/CPU-hr. It is powered by the Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System (OS) and Sun(TM) Grid Engine running on Sun's x64 hardware. CPU-hr is defined as the aggregate time spent across all CPUs and rounded up to the next hour. For more information, please visit http://www.network.com.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision -- "The Network is The Computer"(TM) -- Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

SOURCE: Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. Chhandomay Mandal, 603-589-0576 chhandomay.mandal@sun.com
   

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