Rock Processor: Sun Microsystems working on a processor with 16 cores

Sun Microsystems has said in a statement that they are going ahead with their plans to develop a processor with as many as 16 cores on one piece of silicon.

Intel and AMD are just reaching a stage where they are manufacturing quad core processors.

The company said that they have completed the “tapeout” stage of the coming “Rock” processor. This means that they are nearing finalizing the specifications of the processor.

They aim to make it available in the retail market by next year.

Fadi Azhari, director of marketing for Sun’s Sparc-CMT said that this processor is being designed to power high-end computer systems. This processor is essentially based on their UltraSparc T1 processor.

They are also scheduled to launch the UltraSparc T2 later this year.

Market analyst Jean Bozman spoke about Sun’s involvement in microprocessor market: “The trend in the industry is to the multi-core processor, but Sun has invested fairly early in this.”