Sun Micorystems has gone to Lucent Technologies Inc’s Microelectronics Group for a custom input/output controller it will use in future Java-based systems, workstations and servers. The chip, to be jointly designed by Sun and Lucent, will enable USB Universal Serial Bus and IEEE 1394 Firewire high speed serial bus between workstations and peripherals. Sun will work on the ASIC design and system validation, and use Lucent’s 0.35 micron technology for the design, although for future controllers they plan to use Lucent’s recently announced 0.25 micron modular process. Lucent already offers Fast Ethernet, USB and Firewire standards products and customized chips for host and device I/O applications.
