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Sun Microsystems is undergoing another round of job cuts, this time within the division responsible for its SPARC servers.
The Santa Clara, Calif., company is shedding 7 percent of the workforce in its Scalable Systems Group, which is responsible for its traditional SPARC server platforms, including the most recently released UltraSPARC T1 processor, formerly code-named “Niagara.”
In a statement released April 7, Sun officials said that the layoffs would not impact the companys product roadmap, which includes at least two more generations of the Niagara platform as well as another SPARC chip, codenamed “Rock,” due out in 2008.
Employees were notified this week of the layoffs.
“Suns overall strategy remains the same and our product roadmap is as strong as it has ever been with no significant changes,” Sun said in the statement.
Sun grew rapidly during the Internet boom, but its fortunes fell with the economy, and officials later admitted to failing to recognize the trend within the industry toward smaller industry-standard servers.
The company has undergone a multi-pronged server initiative to return to profitability, including releasing a family of x86 systems—dubbed “Galaxy”—powered by Advanced Micro Devices Opteron processor.
In addition, Sun has targeted the Web tier with its Niagara processor, which offers up to eight cores, with each core capable of processing up to four instruction threads simultaneously.
The company in November released the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 systems powered by Niagara. In addition, Sun this year is taping out both the Niagara II chip—due in 2007—and Rock processor, David Yen, executive vice president of SSG, said in an interview last month.
Despite efforts such as these and open-source pushes around such technology as Solaris and the T1 chip, Suns financial numbers continue to lag.
In the second quarter for Suns 2006 fiscal year, the company lost $223 million, and has been working to integrate recent acquisitions, including SeeBeyond and StorageTek, which while growing Suns revenue, has also expanded its payroll.