Sun Microsystems has acquired microprocessor start-up Montalvo Systems for an undisclosed sum.
Sun is one of the few companies that continues to design microprocessors for use in its own servers. For example, the company's UltraSparc T2 is an octal-core chip that integrates other components of a computer on the same chip.
Montalvo is believed to working on a low-power processor that aims to compete with chips from Intel and AMD. The unique feature of Montalvo's design is the use of asynchronous processor cores. Instead of multiple, identical cores found in Intel's chips, Montalvo reportedly plans to use different types of cores on the same chip to improve performance and keep power consumption low.