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Virtualization: Article

Virtualization Expo: Sun Kills Off Rock: NYT

Sun will now have to rely on Fujitsu for its high-end Sparc processors
By Maureen O'Gara
Article Rating:
June 16, 2009 09:15 AM EDT
Reads:
 1,362

Sun has killed its vaunted Rock chip, according to the New York Times.

Five years in development at the cost of billions of dollars, the 16-core/32-threads UltraSparc chip was meant for a line of high-end Supernova SMP servers that had already been delayed several times.

The boxes were supposed to be for floating point-intensive apps and data-facing workloads like back-end database servers.

Rock was supposed to be out last year but wound up getting postponed until the second half of this year. Apparently it doesn’t work right. Sun was previously rumored to be having trouble with its newfangled transactional memory.

It’s unclear whether Oracle, which is soon to take possession of Sun, pushed the dingus off the cliff. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has said he was going to invest in Sparc after the acquisition closes.

Sun will now have to rely on Fujitsu for its high-end Sparc processors, provided it still needs high-end Sparc processors.

Published June 16, 2009 – Reads 1,362
Copyright © 2009 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Maureen O'Gara

Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025.

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