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Vincent Padois, head tutor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University who teaches robotics and is babysitting the Paris ICub, makes a demonstration with ICub robot, a ?hybrid embodied cognitive system for a humanoid robot" about 1 metre (3.2 feet) high, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris September 4, 2009. Six versions of ICub exist in laboratories across Europe, where scientists are painstakingly tweaking its electronic brain to make it capable of learning, just like a human child and hoping it will learn how to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances, offering new insights into the development of human consciousness. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

Pictures of the year: Technology

A look at the year's best science and technology photos.   Slideshow 

    Sun Micro kills "Rock" high-end chip project: report

    BOSTON
    Tue Jun 16, 2009 2:31am EDT
    A Sun Microsystems sign is pictured at the company's headquarters in Santa Clara, California March 18, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

    BOSTON (Reuters) - Sun Microsystems Inc killed development of an advanced server chip it hoped would leapfrog its technology past rivals IBM and Intel Corp, the New York Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

    Japan

    Officials with Sun, the world's No. 4 maker of computer services, declined comment on the report about the abandoned chip project, which Sun has dubbed Rock.

    Sun, which has agreed to sell itself to software giant Oracle Corp for about $7 billion, had invested more than five years and billions of dollars in the project, according to the newspaper. It had hoped to use the home-brewed chips in new machines, rather than ones from Japan's Fujitsu Ltd, which now run the bulk of its high-end servers.

    News of the chip's demise came after Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison recently said he planned to boost investment in developing Sun's server chips after he closes the acquisition.

    Rock had been scheduled to start shipping last year, but was delayed several times as Sun engineers discovered glitches, according to the New York Times report, which said its sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

    Sun designed the chip for high-end servers, which primarily compete with machines from International Business Machines Corp and Hewlett Packard Co.

    Sun shares fell 0.2 percent to close at $9.28 on the Nasdaq.

    (Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Andre Grenon)
    Japan


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