Treffer: Sun's R&D Spectrum.

This article focuses on the business planning of Sun Microsystems Inc. The company's Sun Labs in Menlo Park, California, employs some 200 scientists and engineers and spends $80 million to $100 million a year. Its projects include sensors, supercomputers, high-speed networking, optical interconnects, third-generation Web technologies, Java and more. Internet switches capable of handling tens to hundreds of terabits of traffic per second today cost millions of dollars and fill entire rooms. But if an ongoing project at Sun Labs is successful, such switches will have dimensions and price tags more like those of PCs. Last July, Sun won a three-year, $50 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to design a supercomputer with ultrahigh internal bandwidth based on proximity I/O. IBM and Cray Inc. each won awards for designs based on different principles. Sun Labs is working on computers at the other end of the spectrum as well, and it claims to have developed the world's smallest secure Web server. Code-named Sizzle, the server is the size of a quarter and is intended to go inside home appliances, personal medical devices, sensors and the like.