Sun makes early delivery of OS for Merced processor

Sun has rolled out the first version of Solaris for Intel's Merced (IA-64) processor despite the much-hyped server chip not going on sale until the start of next year.

The company is claiming a significant victory for itself, its customers and its partners by delivering a 64-bit operating system in plenty of time to take advantage of Merced.

Sun's partners include Fujitsu, NCR, Siemens and Toshiba.

"Without a viable 64-bit operating system the power of Merced is pointless for customers. We've had 64-bit Solaris ever since Ultra Sparc and the work we are doing on Solaris for IA-64 means that Sun's customers will be ready to make the most of the new architecture," said Guy Martin, Sun's marketing manager for Northern Europe.

Although the implementation of Solaris for Merced provides backward compatibility for existing Solaris Intel IA-32 applications, a recompile will be necessary to port the operating system from the currently available 64-bit Solaris for Sun's Sparc architecture. The company, however, denied that this would create a problem for companies planning to transfer applications to Merced.

Sun stated this strategy meant that today's applications were future-proofed because the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) were common across all Solaris platforms. By having multiple source-code-compatible 64-bit platforms it is possible for companies to implement 64-bit Solaris today and be sure that, in the future, applications can be transferred to Merced if required.