Sun's Niagara 2: open-source

Sun is all about open-source these days, offering up all of its core software for zilch. The next frontier for the company? Open-source hardware. Crazy though it may sound, the company's forthcoming Niagara 2 processor will have a fully open-sourced design under the GPL, in addition to those impressive features (eight cores, eight threads per core) that the company announced back in 2005. "I can view and modify the source code. It also comes with verification, architecture simulation and other tools," said Naxin Zhang, Chief Executive for China-based chipmaker Polaris Micro. "We truly believe OpenSparc will blossom in the future because it is open." As a matter of fact, Sun has already lined up two interested manufacturers--Simply RISC and Polaris Micro--who want to make "clone" chips based on Sun's design. So what's in it for Sun? Like with other open-source endeavors, the company hopes to sell its support services as the visibility of the Niagara 2 platform increases. "...As with Sun's other open-source activities, resultant revenue to Sun remains more a matter of faith than scientific fact," said Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff.

For more on Niagara 2:
- see this CNET article