Wind River offers Sparc-Linux option

Embedded computing specialist Wind River has announced plans to support Linux running on Sun Microsystems' UltraSparc T1 "Niagara" processor for telecommunications customers. Its Carrier-Grade Linux product for the chip will be available in the second half of 2007, the company said Thursday. Novell and Red Hat, mainstream Linux sellers, both withdrew their Sparc versions years ago.

Wind River's version will join versions from Ubuntu and Gentoo that run on the chip. Niagara includes eight cores, each able to execute four threads of independent instructions; the Niagara 2 that is in development has eight cores with eight threads apiece, and Niagara 3 will further the trend.