In response to questions about APL and Rock, a Sun spokesman said the company isn't providing details until sometime in the first half of 2007. "Sun continues to work closely with Fujitsu to develop systems based on the APL architecture," the spokesman said. "This is an important project for Sun, and we're pleased with our progress and our partnership with Fujitsu."

At Gartner Inc.'s annual data center conference in Las Vegas three weeks ago, analyst Paul McGuckin advised attendees to find out more about Sun's UltraSparc product plans. "You need to get an explanation in writing about how UltraSparc investments are going to be protected," he said.

As a group, Sun's UltraSparc-based systems face competition from rivals such as IBM, which next year is expected to release servers based on the next version of its Power chip -- the Power6. Sun also offers its own UltraSparc alternative: the Sun Fire x64 line, based on Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Opteron processor.

Tom Jones, Unix administrator at The Austin American-Statesman newspaper in Texas, said he hasn't heard much from his Sun sales representatives about the APL systems. Jones said he is leaning toward using the company's Opteron-based systems running the Solaris operating system. But he added that he's being held back by an inability to find third-party software that has been adapted to support the Sun Fire x64 machines.