Sun's Returning Co-Founder Talks About New Role: Page 3 of 5

InformationWeek: So how was Kealia's technology different from that of other computer companies that have brought products to market using Opteron chips?

Bechtolsheim: We can't say--the technology will be appearing when the products come to market. Sun has only said it will announce something in the next few quarters.

What I can say is that everything from CPU performance to I/O to networking is being upgraded a lot faster--we'll update these systems every six to nine months.

And the volume opportunity is the interesting angle. The secret to life here is efficiency. We're trying to do a whole lineup of machines here in a way that enables customers to get investment protection and upgrades. It's a whole new design style to make life more efficient in the computer business. Sun's servers have price points from a few thousand to couple of hundred thousand dollars. Not that Sun hasn't tried this in the past, but CPU upgradability is very important, of course. With PCI Express, 10-Gigabit Ethernet, and other technologies coming, there are many things customers have a rightful expectation these systems will support.

InformationWeek: What computing jobs will customers want to buy Sparc systems for then, versus x86-based computers?