Luxtera and Sun Microsystems Demonstrate World’s First 40Gbit/s DWDM CMOS Optical Link

Seattle, WA, November 14, 2005 – Luxtera Inc., a fabless semiconductor company and the world leader in silicon photonics, announced today that Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) has chosen Luxtera as a technology partner to develop high bandwidth, low latency dense wavelength-division-multiplexed (DWDM) optical interconnects to form the building blocks for future terabit links in Hero, Sun’s HPCS program. HPCS is the United States' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) High Productivity Computing Systems program.

Sun and Luxtera will demonstrate a working 40Gbit/s optical link based on DWDM at the Super Computing Conference in Seattle, WA (November 14-17, 2005). The link exploits nanophotonic DWDM transceivers built entirely in a standard silicon CMOS production process using Luxtera’s CMOS Photonics™ technology. Sun and Luxtera developed the link as part of their ongoing technology exploration in the HPCS program.

“Silicon based photonics shows great promise for building balanced ultra scale systems such as those requested by DARPA under the HPCS program,” said Greg Papadopoulos, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems. “With Luxtera, we have a partner with the unique ability to integrate this level of performance in CMOS and with a technology roadmap that scales up to terabits of bandwidth on a single fiber with great reliability.”

Luxtera’s CMOS Photonics™ technology offers the massive scalability of DWDM implemented on a single silicon chip together with ultra-low latency, and it retains the reliability and cost structure of standard CMOS fabrication. These capabilities will enable Sun to create a new generation of powerful supercomputers that surpass conventional systems constrained by the limitations of copper interconnects.

“Our working relationship with Sun has been outstanding,” said Alex Dickinson, chief executive officer at Luxtera. “We have a partner that is committed to innovation and understands the importance of silicon photonics. Our DWDM-on-a-chip technology is now operating at 40Gbit/s, which is just the first milestone on a path that will deliver huge bandwidth using the natural scalability of DWDM.”

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Catriona Harris
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About Luxtera Inc.
Luxtera, Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company and the world leader in silicon photonics. Luxtera will fulfill the world’s insatiable demand for bandwidth by uniting the high performance of fiber-optic communications with the low-cost/high-volume manufacturing advantages of silicon CMOS fabrication. The company was founded in 2001 by a team of industry-renowned researchers and technology managers drawn from the communication and semiconductors industries. Luxtera is funded by leading venture capitalists: Sevin Rosen Funds, August Capital and New Enterprise Associates. Luxtera will announce products details in 2005 and ship products in 2006. Luxtera is headquartered in Carlsbad, CA. More information on Luxtera can be found on the company's web site: www.luxtera.com.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
A singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world's most important markets. Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at www.sun.com.

CMOS Photonics™ is a trademark of Luxtera Inc., Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, UltraSPARC, and Netra are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owner.

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