Major Intel, Sun deal to be announced Monday

SOURCES CLOSE to AMD Taiwan confirm that the CEOs of Sun and Intel will announce a wide ranging deal on Monday.

Reports started emerging late last week that such a deal was on the cards, but now it is a definite and will be a multi-year agreement covering servers, telecom based systems and untilately workstations.

The deal will not cut out AMD from the equation, but it looks as if the smaller chip company will have to do more if it wants to keep Sun on board.

It also appears that the first products, using Solaris, will appear in the middle of next year, with Sun and Intel collaborating on validation, design and engineering in the future. No-one from any of the companies was available for comment at press time.

Those with long memories will remember that Intel and Sun fell out many years ago over the future of the Itanium processor, with then senior VP Paul Otellini cross over Scott McNealy's intransigence to port Solaris to that microprocessor. But things have changed. In the last year, CEO of Intel Paul Otellini has got Apple on board, Dell has gone AMD, and Scott McNealy isn't the CEO of Sun no-more. µ

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