Yet Another New Business For Sun (SUNW)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 6, 6:19PM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Sun Microsystems (SUNW) says it has created a new microprocessor that works so well that it will be able to sell it to other companies. Instead of doing one programming sequence, the Sun chip can do many. According to The Wall Street Journal: "Where most chips typically handle one to four threads at a time, Sun says its new offering can execute as many as 64 at once."

The new product may not have an easy birth. Upon hearing about the chip, IBM management said a the processor was a "niche" product. Not a very kind approach.

Several other observers say that it will be hard for Sun to get competitors to use its processor.

Sun should get an "A" for effort. It still needs something to get Wall St. interested in the company. After releasing quarterly results with flat revenue compared to the same quarter last year, investors started to turn on the stock. Over the last month, the shares are down 9% and now trade at $4.96, near their 52-week low.

Sun continues to present itself as a confused collection of businesses that issues press releases about its "next big thing" fairly often. But, at this point, no one is listening.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.