RB: I think at this point I don't see any particular danger there. I think that what's interesting about the Intel architecture is that it's well-suited because of its low cost, to create a lot of low-cost boxes, especially in distributed environments and workstations. However, the latest advances in SPARC technology, especially around things like Niagara, are far and away superior to what they have in Intel for the particular purpose that they were designed for.

IW: Which is what?

RB: Which is, let's say, high-throughput Web transactions. Again, the kinds of things that run the Internet. A Niagara processor is more well-suited to run an Amazon.com or an eBay simply by throughput, the number of Web transactions you can support at any time. Because of the fact that it's got 32 cores on a given chip.

IW: Do you think that the SPARC really stands a chance when you have everybody thinking Intel?

RB: Well, I like to believe it does. And we're seeing a lot of uptake in the latest SPARC boxes, so it seems like the public does too. Even for Linux distributions. It's actually amazing. I mean you'd think that if SPARC was dying, you'd be seeing a tail-off in terms of processor sales. But we're selling so many boxes now, we're basically selling our inventory basically as fast as we can build them.