There has been a technology migration to the commercial space in recent years, according to Steve Campbell.

At present, we see an increasing emphasis on distributed applications and Grid computing. For Sun, x64 is the platform of choice, next to CMT throughput computing. Sun people are taking on the speed of light.

Sun Grid is about utility computing. Users are paying one dollar per CPU to get on the Grid. New business models are being developed without the need to make large investments in infrastructure, as the speaker stated. The x64 platform has been developed by Sun and AMD providing a coherent hyper transport and an optimal performance for 32-bit.

Steve Campbell also referred to chip technology by mentioning the SPARC architecture manual. Panther, Niagara, APL and Rock are the chips in the Sun family. Since 64-bit moves ahead, it is the chip R&D that matters, insisted Mr. Campbell.

Sun also plays an important role in the innovative DARPA HPCS peta-scale project. The Sun labs take on the speed of light by offering proximity communications and taking care of the alignment of chips to transfer data.

HPC innovation at Sun happens at the system level with commodity x64; at the chip level with CMT; and at the OS level with Solaris and Open Source. Once more Steve Campbell highlighted these achievements as necessary steps if you want to take on the speed of light (HPCS).

Other innovations to address are situated in the fields of space, power, cooling, and performance.

Inquisitor Wolfgang Gentzsch referred to the agreement Sun has signed with Microsoft. Steve Campbell answered that this agreement is a positive evolution for the world of Java technology.