Sun Microsystems Inc’s chip arm says it’s now getting first deliveries of its Java-on-silicon microJava 701 chip and claims it performs as well as expected. It won’t say exactly how well until it has finished tweaking benchmarks. It plans to start talking about UltraJava next year, which is likely to end up in Sun’s JavaStations along with embedded UltraSparcs. In the meantime, with the 400MHz UltraSparc IIs now in the pipeline, it is almost ready with a 450MHz speed bump. SMP-enabled UltraSparc i chips with embedded PCI won’t happen until UltraSparc IIIi. It says that it hasn’t revised its roadmap in light of the publication of Intel Corp’s IA-64 roadmap. Sun dismissed talk of using IBM Corp as an UltraSparc foundry right now. It says it’s got a slew of IPs committed to its current fab Texas Instruments Inc – but it clearly has a disposition towards working with IBM in future.
