upc, it does not conclusively show that Sun and AMD don't have a joint development intent for K9 and future processors. However, if Sun were moving strongly in that direction then they would not be wasting time and money on Itanium and Power versions of Solaris. At best, such a cooperative arrangement with AMD is merely one possibility out of many.
Sun and AMD never really came out and stated such a development arrangment. That is a creation of us observers based on what is perceived as beneficial for Sun and AMD together. Sun's official line is that Opteron is for inexpensive servers.
However, all outside observers seem to agree that Sun can not keep up in the processor wars, and it would be foolhardy for them to continue to try. Up to now Opteron has been the only acknowleged strategy since it does replace SPARC on the low end. This Power and Itanium talk shows that Sun is keeping its options wide open on the high end.
In fact, Power and Itanium are the only two alternatives Sun has talked about for the high end. Think about that.
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