Sun stood out because it so often oscillated between lovable bravado and insanity.
It’s hard to think of another big-time technology shop that would be willing to rumble with Intel in the x86 chip market.
For one, it costs a ton of money to design chips. Second, just about every company that has tried to carve out an x86 niche has failed. (The most spectacular flameout being Transmeta, which went after laptops with a low-power chip.) And then, even if you succeed in getting a good product out, your reward is a constant war against Intel.