Sun offers free access to chip designs

Sun Microsystems has promised to give its chip designs away for free, providing developers don't use it for commercial products.

Tool vendors, chip developers and academic researchers will gain free access to Sun's picoJava and Sparc chip source files during the initial R&D stages of projects.

Bill Joy, founder and chief scientist at Sun, said the removal of the initial licensing charge brings the technology within reach of start-ups and academics previously prohibited from development by the up-front licensing costs.

The move marks another chapter in the company's Community Source Licensing model. In December, Sun made its Java Development Kit freely available in an attempt to boost Java development.

Ashim Pal, analyst at Meta Group, welcomed the JDK giveaway as a shrewd move, which will generate development and revenue.

But Pal was not convinced Sun's freeing-up of chip designs will generate a similar response. "This won't have much of an impact. Few companies can afford to spend time and more resources on chip design. The number of people competitive in this space is relatively small.

"What I see Sun trying to do is create a nucleus of academic and research interest around Sparc. I really can't see any win other than innovation around the platform. But this won't create an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) market for UltraSparc chips - this is a hedging practice," he added.

Source files for picoJava will be made available this month, followed by those for 32bit microSparc at the end of the summer. Designs for 64bit UltraSparc chips are due at the end of the year.