Sun chooses new silicon partner

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp to take over 45nm chip manufacturing process

New UltraSPARC chips to be made by TSMC

Sun Microsystems is to partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (TSMC) to manufacture its latest 45 nanometer processors.

The agreement comes as Sun's previous partner, Texas Instruments (TI), abandoned plans to move to a 45nm production process to focus on making chips for the mobile phone market.

TSMC will make Sun’s latest ULtraSPARC processors destined for use in Sun SPARC servers that will compete with similar systems based on Intel chips. TI will continue to work with Sun in the testing and packaging of new processors.