Sun unveils world's first Open Source Microprocessor under GPL - will fuel developer community and SME growth in the Middle East

Scott McNealy, in his keynote presentation at RSA Conference, discussed security by design and introduced new Sun solutions that enable customers to embrace the opportunities provided by Internet expansion.

Kicking off the Open Source Business Conference, Jonathan Schwartz formally unveiled the roadmap for Sun's OpenSPARC[TM] initiative - the open source project for Sun's innovative T1 processor - and declared it will be licensed under the GPL.

'Proprietary technology relegates you either to a niche or to the ditch,' said Jonathan Schwartz, president and COO of Sun Microsystems. 'We're growing our market opportunity by steadfastly open sourcing the entirety of our software portfolio - from the Solaris OS to Java developer tools - and now we're taking the next step by open sourcing the world's most innovative microprocessor under the GPL. Giving our customers more choice and driving community innovation expands our economic opportunity and is forcing our competitors to sit up and take notice, we are back on offense.'

In his keynote he detailed the first stages of open sourcing the UltraSPARC T1 processor under the GPL, publishing the chip architecture and HyperVisor API specification that will enable multi-OS support and expand the overall market for Sun's product offerings.

'The free world welcomes Sun's decision to use the Free Software Foundation's GNU GPL for the freeing of OpenSPARC,' said Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation. 'We'd love to see other hardware companies follow in Sun's footsteps.'

This step also opens up the breakthrough CoolThreads[TM] architecture and enables an entirely new community built around 64-bit, thread rich implementation to bring more choices and applications to the market faster.

'Delivering the capability to develop localized OS applications will enable the growing enterprise markets across the middle east to accelerate their progression towards true grid computing and benefit from the advantages this offers to the enterprise,'

commented Chris Cornelius, MD Sun Microsystems Middle East.

'We have seen a marked increase in the growth of the small to medium enterprise market in the Middle East, and hope to fuel this growth with increased uptake of open source software.'

In his presentation at RSA, 'Tear Down the Walls -- Embrace Risk and Opportunity Through Security', McNealy discussed the importance of building a secure infrastructure through a systemic approach that enhances performance and provides new methods of business development.

While the network has changed the way business is conducted, bringing new opportunities to collaborate, share and communicate, organizations must be able to mitigate the risks these new opportunities present. Building walls is not an effective method of addressing security, risk can not be avoided.

'Security is an integral component in fueling the Participation Age. If people can not trust the network they will be less inclined to share,' said Scott McNealy, chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems.

'Bolting on security pieces is not sustainable in the future. Security needs to be built into every layer of the infrastructure, from hardware, to software, to the operating system, without sacrificing flexibility or performance. Security solutions should extend business opportunities, not restrict them.'

McNealy introduced solutions that expand Sun's security platform, announcing support for Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), the next generation cryptographic technology selected by the National Security Agency, in Sun Java[TM] System Web Server 7.0. This integration helps reduce the time it takes to complete online transactions and offers new opportunities to connect to the network using devices such as cell phones, PDAs and wireless sensors.

Additionally, Sun announced Solaris[TM] Trusted Extensions, expanding the industry's most advanced and secure Operating System (OS) to deliver an additional layer of government-grade security without sacrificing performance.

Solaris Trusted Extensions, building on the Solaris 10 OS, provides security features traditionally reserved for classified or high-security organizations to any organization that requires higher levels of protection.