[link|http://news.com.com/2061-10808_3-5689785.html|Sun to go private? No way, says McNealy]

But read the article. It makes a couple of connects for me on some things I have seen.

In the DEEEEP background of corporate dealings where whacked things are explored sometimes, I have had 3 people ask me if I had heard about it. One is with a capital procurement firm, the other two are with deal brokers. All three are IT members in perspective firms.

One even added a tidbits of some thing akin to "Some tasty little nuggets of alien technology", Sun selling SPARC architecture designs and facilities lock-stock-n-barrel to AMD, with special guarantees for pricing for SUN from AMD, to buy SPARC from AMD. As well as mainboard contruction... which is new (though familiar) for AMD.

This presents a bigtime head scratcher for me. I hope, nope REALLY hope that what happened to EV (Alpha technology) doesn't happen to SPARC. I can see AMD jumping on this.

Only problem... AMD doesn't have the free capital/stock/whatever to accomplish this right now. Though the/a special deal may allow it to happen. Of course pending approval.

There are other rumors in the mill, that if taken with this, makes sense.

It is a cooperative effort to remove a heavy piece of SUN, that keeps dragging resources away from the company's core imperatives.

AMD already geared for this kind of work, sorta kinda is the natural choice. As is evidence SUN buying Opeteron's by the truckloads, they would expand that to include the SPARC stuff.

I am guessing an exclusive deal for SUN would be that.

Is the single largest expense they have at this point.

AMD, would Want it... to get the licensing revenues from Fujitsu and TI. And to get into a good arrangement for fall back and growth.

Margins are extremely thin, the bigger you are, the more you have. Economy of Scale.