“Sun Microsystems is distributing the basic designs of its two major chip architectures : Sparc and PicoJava. This is analogous to what’s happening in the Linux world where computer code is basically free. Netscape also does this with its widely used Communicator browser.
The company will make tools and reference materials for its processors available for download beginning at the end of this month.
‘We’ll proliferate this technology much more widely than the way we would under the old model,’ said Harlan McGhan, manager of architecture marketing for microelectronics at Sun. The licensing terms let people use the information for research purposes, requiring royalty payments to Sun only when people actually ship products, McGhan said.
‘Anyone can download, modify, and synthesize the processors for free. Sun will charge a royalty only if customers ship the processors for revenue,’ according to Jim Turley writing in the Microprocessor Report’s Embedded Processor Watch. “
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.
