Sun heartily encouraged investors last week with news of their multicore Niagara 2 being on its way. Some of that encouragement may have been to offset the bad news from this week, with Sun's plan to lay off more employees. This comes despite remaining a profitable company for the better part of a year, and will result in the company paying $100 million or more in severance.
Sun made quite a turnaround over a year ago, bringing in over $329 million in profit last quarter. Their Niagara processor and its various iterations have interested many. Most recently, the eight-core Niagara 2 has promised to put every other server-class CPU to shame, according to Sun. Why they would choose to cut employees during such a good period for them is unknown, as they are not commenting on it.