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Georgia Electronic Design Center Announces Sun Microsystems Membership

Posted on: Wednesday, 3 March 2004, 06:00 CST

ATLANTA, March 1 /PRNewswire/ -- The Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC) is expanding its broadband technology expertise and research capabilities through a new relationship with Sun Microsystems, Inc. GEDC today announced that Sun has joined as a research member, allowing students to take advantage of the latest technology and equipment for computer-aided design (CAD).

GEDC will work with Sun to establish a new CAD laboratory, to be called the Sun Room, equipped with 24 Sun Blade(TM) 2500 workstations. The in-kind donation represents a $375,000 investment by the company. This is the first installation of the workstations in an academic environment.

"Our relationship with Sun expands our ability to provide student researchers with experience using some of the latest and most advanced design tools and systems in the industry," said Dr. Joy Laskar, GEDC director. "We believe this partnership will continue to establish GEDC as one of the country's leading design centers."

The Sun Blade 2500 workstation is a robust and reliable 64-bit, dual processor-capable workstation, designed and built to visualize and solve complex technical problems. It provides outstanding performance for visually demanding graphics applications, including the mixed-signal design work currently underway at GEDC.

"Sun's Education Group and the Georgia Electronic Design Center have common goals around building and teaming with world-class research institutions, as well as partnering on industry collaboration projects," said Cole Clark, education district manager, Sun Microsystems. "Our donation of Sun Blade workstations will enable students to acquire skills today that they will be able to bring into the workforce tomorrow."

Dr. Laskar said the workstations will provide both theoretical and practical experience for the designers. "This investment by Sun will help ensure that Georgia's students are trained, experienced on the best equipment and ready to join the workforce," he said.

The GEDC is part of the state's centers of innovation strategy, an initiative launched by Gov. Sonny Perdue in 2003. This strategy focuses on the development of centers of excellence in the areas of aerospace, broadband technology, biosciences, digital media, logistics, medical technology and transaction processing. The objective of the strategy is to grow long-term economic opportunities for Georgians across the state and to attract new companies to the state.

About the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC)

The Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC) advances the state's broadband leadership by building critical mass in its many areas of excellence, including subsystem solutions for wireless LAN, enterprise serial interconnects and reconfigurable communication nodes. The center supports world-class research, deep and meaningful industry collaboration, intellectual property generation and revenue generating commercialization efforts. Members of the GEDC enjoy access to state-of-the-art research laboratories and more that $10 million in research and commercialization projects, all supported by the state of Georgia, private and federal funding.

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

Georgia Electronic Design Center

CONTACT: Anne O'Neill of Manning Selvage & Lee, +1-404-870-6841, oranne.oneill@mlspr.com; or Jeff Strane of GEDC, +1-404-656-9963, orjstrane@georgia.org

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