Sun has just added a new chapter to its book of amazing changes of hearth. The company is planning to start selling servers powered by Intel's Xeon processor before June, Sun unveiled. To sweeten the deal, Intel will be offering engineering support for Sun's Solaris operating system.

Sun and Intel historically have had a rocky relationship. Intel designed its Itanium chip in part to kill Sun's Sparc platform, and Sun didn't save any effort to point out the chip's subsequent failure. Sun on its part goofed up in 2002 when customers completely ignored its LX50 server - the firm's first Xeon based processor that has since been discontinued.

22 Jan 2007

It can't have hurt however that most of those painful memories are associated with the "former" CEOs Craig Barrett and Scott McNealy (both have ceded the CEO position to become chairman). Today's deal bore all the signs of a fresh start by the Sun's new CEO Jonathan Schwartz and Intel's Paul Otellini.

Enough so, that when asked what it took for this deal to happen now, Schwartz quipped: "I think it was a bottle of Barolo [wine]."

"A really good bottle," added a smiling Ottelini.

You can watch a video report from Otellini's and Schwartz' press conference below.

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