Here are a couple articles about Sun Microsystems and what they've been planning vis-a-vis microprocessors. They of course have their own SPARC architecture, but they have been looking more closely at x86 recently.

``Sun Microsystems' Solaris will become the third operating system to take advantage of Advanced Micro Devices' 64-bit Opteron processor.

``Solaris, Sun's version of Unix, already runs on 32-bit `x86' processors including AMD's Athlon and Intel's Xeon. But Sun also will release a version in 2004 that will take advantage of the 64-bit extensions that make Opteron different from those other chips, Sun software chief Jonathan Schwartz told reporters in a meeting here Thursday.''

Full story:
http://news.com.com/2100-1006-5089274.html

This second article has some interesting admissions, if you will, about non-SPARC architectures, including Power

PC

``After years of boasting about the advantages of a single-processor computing architecture, Sun Microsystems is changing with the times. Under pressure from rivals, the company has begun to incorporate lower-end `x86' chips into its product lines.

```We see Sun offering certain x86-based products,' said David Yen, a 15-year veteran who runs the company's processor group. `In other words, for some of the (chip areas), we will not waste any of our resources to pursue that. Maybe an Intel solution or an AMD solution is good enough.'''

Full story:
http://news.com.com/2008-7784_3-5089022.html