Intel, Sun Hint at Future Plans

Three months after announcing that it would form a new partnership with Intel, Sun Microsystems will offer a window into what the collaboration could hold for the future.

At Intel's Developer Forum in Beijing, China on April 17, Sun executives will be on hand to demonstrate its Solaris operating system working a system powered by a dual-core Xeon 5100 processor.

On Jan. 22, Intel and Sun announced a new partnership that will lead to Sun building Xeon-based, x86 servers and workstations by the end of 2007.

For its half of the partnership, Intel, of Santa Clara, Calif., will now support Solaris and will encourage ISVs to support Solaris on Xeon platforms. This part of the collaboration will give Sun access to a much broader audience and Intel will also support open-source communities from Sun.

The two companies have been mum about where the first Xeon-based Sun products will appear, but Sun's presence at the show indicates that the two companies are well on their way toward developing new products.

Intel did note that the Solaris OS demonstration was using a Xeon processor equipped with its Dynamic Power technology, which allow a processor's two cores to be power managed independently. This makes it possible for one core to shut down.

In addition to showing off Solaris, Intel also showed off Microsoft's Windows Server, code-named Longhorn, running on systems using Xeon processors.

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media, Distributed by United Press International