The non-Java Sun Studio will be offered for free from now on and Sun Microsystems is also adding support for development on multicore chips.

Sun Studio 11, the edition launched yesterday, is a tool for developing C, C++ and Fortran applications to run on the Solaris or Linux operating systems on Sparc, x86 and x64 hardware platforms. This solution is also compatible with the multicore UltraSparc T1, codenamed Niagara.

The Sun Studio application used to cost about $3,000 per developer, which means this offer is quite a big deal and Sun hopes to leverage the tool to promote its hardware. Considering this is also a time when Sun offers Java Studio Enterprise for Java development, along with Java Studio Creator for Java-based web applications and interfaces that are free to registered members of Sun's Developer Network (SDN), the company is really planning something big.

According to John Loiacono, Executive Vice President of Sun software, this entire offer means Sun is "enabling developers access to the highest performing, most productive suite of tools on the planet, without the burden of additional costs."