Sun cancels its Rock chip

SUN HAS DECIDED to scrap its Rock chip project which was a cunning plan to create a server chip that would smack about IBM and Intel.

Before Sun was bought by Oracle, it was leaning heavily on the Rock chip plan and kept talking to the world plus dog about how wonderful it was all going to be when it finally got that built.

In April 2007, Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun, bragged about receiving the first test versions of Rock, so it has been sitting on someone's shelf for a while now.

According to the New York Times, its sources claim that the Rock chip has met with an "unceremonious end".

It was supposed to ship last year, but Sun has delayed it a number of times. There were rumours of technical glitches that were holding it back. In the meantime, Sun was using chips from Fujitsu for its larger servers.

Oracle will be pleased with the decision, as it is not really that interested in the hardware side of Sun and spending a fortune on developing more hardware is not something that it would want to do.

For its part Sun does not need the shot in the arm that Rock could provide. With Oracle buying the outfit any purged dead projects will not cost any directors their careers. µ