The New York Times says that Oracle killed a Sun project to clone Intel's x86 Xeon server chip and turn out a "no-frills, low-power variant" that it could put into thousands of servers for folks like Facebook, Yahoo and Google.

The paper said it had heard tell of such a thing for a long time but could never quite nail it until recently when it happened to interview a couple of people "with knowledge of Sun's plans," "who are not authorized to speak publicly."

As part of the fey plan Sun bought the assets of one Montalvo Systems that had done work on low-power Intel clones and hired some "top talent" out of AMD.

The Times says it misses Sun and the way it "oscillated between lovable bravado and insanity."

"Sure, it would be insanely hard and most likely a losing cause to make an x86 chip," the paper says, "but Sun hated being controlled by Intel or any other supplier."