Sun scrapping Java chip plans, analyst says
By James Niccolai
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 11:00 AM PT, Oct 6, 1998
"Overall, the market for Java chips seems to have cooled almost as rapidly as it heated up," Turley said. "Like its software alter-ego, Java chips have garnered a lot of attention but little in the way of actual usage."
That lukewarm market, combined with a management change in Sun's microelectronics division since picoJava was announced, has prompted the company to stop making its own Java chips, Turley said. Sun will continue to develop the picoJava core and will deliver it to its licensees in the hope that they will build Java chips, he added.
However, like Sun, none of its licensees has yet brought a picoJava product to market, Turley said.
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The forthcoming MicroJava 701 chip will likely find its way into finished products in about six months, Turley said. But at 100 MHz, the processor is relatively slow, is large in size, and "uses as much power as a low-end Pentium," Turley said.
"It's a cow," Turley said bluntly.
Because of its high power consumption, the chip is unlikely to be used in battery-powered devices, but could be used in TV set-top boxes, network computers, and other devices that plug into a main outlet, Turley said.
infoworld.com
Sun has replied to this article saying that it is working on a picojava-3. And surprisingly:
Perhaps the most successful Java processor so far has come from an unexpected source: Patriot Scientific Corp. (San Diego) an embedded-silicon vendor. The company is shipping its PSC1000 processor, aiming at deeply embedded, low-power applications such as handheld devices and factory-floor control systems. The PSC1000 is an independent design, not based on picoJava.
eetimes.com
Michael |
