Montalvo Systems was a secretive startup with bases in Santa Clara, Boulder, Colorado and Bangalore, India, which was believed to have raised more than $75 million in an attempt to take on Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. with a low power x86 processor.

The company said of itself that it was developing a complex, high-performance media processor targeted at portable applications. This was said to involve multiprocessing silicon. According to rumors the company, which had grown to about 300 staff, was struggling to get its silicon working and was in need of a further $100 million. And with a large staff the company was burning through cash at a tremendous rate.

Nonetheless it seems that Sun Microsystems was interested in some mix of the patents and ideas behind the company. One report said that Sun has bought the Montalvo assets for more than $5 million.

"We believe acquiring these assets will enhance the current and future products we are developing and expect them to contribute to future generations of Sun's microprocessor technology which will in turn drive additional differentiation for Sun's Systems products," Sun is quoted as saying in a statement, although that statement was not on Sun's website when this story was first posted.

The Montalvo website has always been rudimentary because the company was not making public statements although there were still tens of jobs on offer there when this story was first posted. It must be assumed that those offers are no longer valid and given that Sun is said to be making an asset purchase there may be many of the Montalvo employees who are likely to be laid off.

By: DocMemory
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