It’s official, Rock is late. Way.

Remember we told you about this in December, when it was a maybe? It’s officially not a maybe any longer.

Ashlee Vance confirmed this in an interview from ISSCC on Monday.

Now one of Sun’s top engineers Marc Tremblay has confirmed the “second half of 2009″ date for systems delivery, during an interview here at the International Solid State Circuits Conference. Sun had looked to spook rivals Intel and IBM with its much-ballyhooed 16-core chip but will now trail at least Intel with a major high-end processor refresh.