Posted on Friday, April 25 2008 @ 20:02 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
A couple of days ago
Apple bought chip maker P.A. Semi and today Sun announces
it's going to buy low-power processor designer Montalvo for about $5 million.
"Montalvo's assets will be integrated into Sun's Microelectronics business unit. We believe acquiring these assets will enhance the current and future products we are developing and expect them to contribute to future generations of Sun's microprocessor technology which will in turn drive additional differentiation for Sun's Systems products, a company representative wrote in an e-mail.
...
Montalvo designed, but never quite produced, an energy-efficient multicore chip that runs the same software as processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. Venture capitalists put more than $73 million into the company. Montalvo, however, burned through that and has been looking for more money. Subsequent investors balked. Negotiations between Sun and Montalvo were reported on News.com earlier this month.
