Why is Sun so interested in bringing Solaris to Itanium?
Here it is nine years later since I did some Intel deal and people still doubt our intention. We realized there were two platforms back in 1990 that were going to survive. One was Intel; that was easy to pick. The other one was (Sun’s) Sparc. People didn’t believe us. There is today a huge business for Sparc applications and there’s a huge business for Intel. So we ported Solaris to Intel. We spent years and tens of millions of dollars, if not more, converting the source base, and nearly crippled Sun back in ’92 and ’93 doing that. Today we have one source base and we compile twice (once for Intel and once for Sparc chips). We entered into a deal with Intel several years ago to do Itanium. We did it and they reneged. I think they just didn’t deliver on their commitments. They’re confusing the success of Sun in the marketplace with the Solaris-on-Itanium port, and they don’t realize that their success in the marketplace is (tied to) Solaris. So if anything, if I was them, I would embrac
