Sun Microsystems Inc president and chief executive Scott McNealy is careful to point out that Sun views the move to the UltraSparc chip generation not as a transition, but as an enhancement. Sun is aiming for 100% binary compatibility with existing applications, he said, and if anything does not, run it will be viewed as a bug not a feature. McNealy is remembering the company’s traumatic transitions from Motorola Inc’s 68000 family to its own Sparc, and from SunOS to Solaris 2, and promises that Sun has learned from those experiences. I’ve been compatible and incompatible, and compatible is better, he said.
