"TSMC gives us leading process technology coupled with the economics scale of high volume and lower cost," said Dr. David Yen, Sun's executive vice president, Microelectronics.
"TSMC is already fully engaged with engineers from both Sun and TI as we make this transition as seamless and as fast as possible," said Sridhar Vajapey, VP, Technology, Validation and Test, who heads the Sun team that selected TSMC.
"TSMC, working with Sun Microelectronics as their foundry partner together with Texas Instruments, on this industry-leading technology is a tremendous synergy of strengths," said Jack Sun, vice president of R&D at TSMC. "This collaboration brings together all the ingredients to successfully design, test and manufacture some of the most complex chips in the world on TSMC's CPU-grade manufacturing process."
"TI has had the pleasure of being a strategic partner with Sun for almost two decades and we look forward to working with TSMC to provide turnkey backend support for Sun's SPARC product roadmap," Hunter Ward, TI VP & General Mgr - Sun Business Unit.
Driving OpenSPARC(TM) Adoption
As part of today's announcement, both Sun and TSMC will collaborate to expand Sun's OpenSPARC program. In the first phase of the program the two companies will work together to expand the university outreach program in Taiwan. In addition to its existing university outreach program, TSMC has a large fabless customer base and a substantial number of large IP partners that will help expand OpenSPARC platform adoption.
Through the OpenSPARC program, Sun has established six major universities as OpenSPARC Technology Centers of Excellence: the University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Texas, Austin; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Stanford University; and Carnegie Mellon University. Each Center of Excellence has a minimum two-year commitment, during which time they'll execute chip design research and course work based on Sun's chip multi-threading(CMT) design.
Sun Microelectronics
The Sun Microelectronics group oversees development in networking, cryptography, and high-performance computing, and servers as a supplier to OEM customers around the globe. In August 2007, Sun introduced the UltraSPARC T2 processor, the world's fastest commodity processor. The UltraSPARC T2 set new, single-chip performance world records in two industry standard benchmarks: SPECint_rate2006 (78.5) and SPECfp_rate2006 (62.3).(a) The UltraSPARC T2 processor, which is powered by less than 95 watts (nominal) with less than two watts per thread, boasts the most functionality, and lowest wattage per core and thread of any processor in its class.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
A singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer"(TM) -- guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world's most important markets. Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at sun.com.
Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, and The Network is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. All SPARC, OpenSPARC, and UltraSPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the US and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
(a) SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp are registered trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 10/23/07. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (UltraSPARC T2, 1 chip, 8 cores), 78.5 SPECint_rate2006 & 62.3 SPECfp_rate2006.
Contact:
Sun Global Communications
Mark Richardson, 650-257-4038