Sun kills UltraSparc V, Gemini chips

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun has stopped work on the UltraSparc V, a server chip that was supposed to come out late next year, and Gemini, a dual-core chip for Web servers, a company spokeswoman confirmed.

"In order to get back to profitability, we have to make some difficult choices," the spokeswoman said.

The untimely death of the UltraSparc V and Gemini will in some ways simplify Sun's future and its throughput computing initiative, which seeks to boost data throughput in processors.

Under the new strategy, Sun will concentrate on powering its servers with derivatives of the UltraSparc IV, which came out earlier this year, for the near term. One coming derivative, currently known as the UltraSparc IV+ will have an integrated high-speed cache for rapid data access.

Then, in late 2006 and 2007, the company will release Niagara, a multicore, multithreaded chip. Niagara will begin to trickle across the Sun server line. The chip is based on technology acquired from Afara, but it will be compatible with Solaris, Sun's operating system. Sun also has another multicore chip, called Rock, coming out around the same time.

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