Sun Microsystems was founded in 1982 by Stanford alumni, and the name Sun is an acronym for Stanford University Network. Their philosophy immediately focused on networking and were early proponents of technologies that would go on to define our connected world like TCP/IP and ethernet. Sun servers and workstations were seen as the go-to solution for business, research, and financial institutions as they provided the basis of both the hardware and the software to enable these industries to go digital. Sun also did pioneering work in RISC architecture with the SPARC line of microprocessors. Oracle completed their acquisition of Sun in 2010.
Exhibits:
SPARCclassic
The SPARCclassic was born out of Sun’s Entry Systems Group. This was the first model to use their new microSPARC processor. The SPARCclassic sported a diminutive footprint called the “lunchbox” form factor along with the lowest MSRP for any workstation at the time.