The layoffs represent about 7% of that group's worldwide employees, says Stephanie Von Allmen, a spokeswoman from Sun's corporate communications department.

Managers of that division also streamlined the group by closing open requisitions, reallocating resources and increasing organisational efficiency, she adds.

Sun did not offer any specific reason for the layoff, saying that its overall business strategy and technology road map remain the same. This a smart path, given the modest size of this round of layoffs, analysts say.

"I see this as fine-tuning more than changing direction," says Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata. "Obviously, the group is struggling financially, but, in general, this is a small number of people in the scope of things at Sun."

Sun leaders are looking at the company's costs very closely, as they continue to share Sparc processor development with Fujitsu, cancel the Jupiter processor programme, and marshal their resources to launch the new line of Rock processors, he says.

Indeed, the company's statement held that Sun would maintain its focus on the Sparc processor, using its OpenSparc initiative to expand the community of hardware and software developers.

As the division responsible for high-end systems, the Scalable Systems Group has helped to manage the company's drive to use an open source model to expand the market for its Sparc processors by sharing source code with developers.

In March, it was David Yen, executive vice-president of the Scalable Systems Group, who announced Sun's plan to unveil specifications for its Hypervisor API (application programming interface) and UltraSparc T1 (formerly code-named 'Niagara') processor design.

Together, they aim to allow companies to port Linux, BSD and other operating systems to UltraSparc T1, and give developers the information they need to create related hardware and software tools.