Sun could use “any” good press. So it is not surprising that they went ahead with this announcement. (Remember the joint announcement with Google about a year back. Nothing has come out of it. Has it?)
The loser from this Intel-Sun partnership is obviously AMD. Intel has a chance to poke their chief rival in the eye with this announcement. The actual volume of Intel processor sales to Sun is not going to be huge anytime soon but if and when it picks up it is likely to be at the expense of AMD.
Wonder where this leaves Sun’s Sparc? Eventually Sun will probably have to phase out their home grown processor or at least reduce their investment in it in the short run. The end-users as a whole benefit as hardware and software vendors compete to work with each other.
Pakora Korner 