Processors

Correction at 7 a.m. PST January 23: The 2006 growth rate in tech salaries was slightly off. It was 1.7 percent.

Salaries of tech professionals managed to spike up an average of 4.6 percent last year to $78,035, according to survey results released Thursday by tech career site Dice.com.

The survey results, ironically, come at a time when companies across corporate America are announcing layoffs, freezing wages, and even going so far as to temporarily institute wage cuts, like Advanced Micro Devices.

Dice, based on a survey of more than 19,000 respondents taken between … Read more

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Qualcomm on Tuesday said it has acquired "certain graphics and multimedia technology assets" from Advanced Micro Devices' handheld business.

The acquisition was only for $65 million, so we're not talking a huge deal, but what used to constitute AMD's handheld business is off the chipmaker's books, as it focuses on its core PC and graphics semiconductor markets.

Qualcomm says it will take AMD's graphic assets and intellectual property, and integrate it with its system on a chip products. Qualcomm has offered jobs to the … Read more

Clarification at 7:40 a.m. PST: The percentage figure for net income has been fixed.

Logitech International announced late Monday plans to cut 550 to 600 jobs, as it posted a steep drop in its financial performance and predicted continued weakness in the months ahead.

The company expects to make the bulk of its job cuts in its fiscal fourth quarter, which started January 1, and take a charge of $16 million to $18 million during the quarter. Overall, Logitech expects to take a $20 million to $24 million charge over the next 12 months.

Logitech, a peripherals giant … Read more

Venture capital investments in IT companies plunged 40 percent to $2.18 billion in the fourth quarter, their worst level in a decade, according to figures released late Friday by VentureSource.

The data further confirms concerns entrepreneurs have already been raising about a funding pullback by VCs over the second half of the year and dire warnings by the VCs themselves, such as Sequoia Capital's infamous R.I.P. PowerPoint presentation.

IT Venture capital dropped to $11.64 billion for all of 2008, down 14.5 percent from the previous year, according to VentureSource. During the past year, IT … Read more

Updated at 10:12 a.m. PST, with more information about AMD's financial performance.

Advanced Micro Devices announced Friday it would slash its workforce by 9 percent and institute temporary salary cuts, from its executive chairman on down to hourly workers.

AMD will cut 1,100 positions in the first quarter through attrition and layoffs, as one of its measures to cut costs during these recessionary times.

The chipmaker will also institute temporary salary cuts, with its CEO Dirk Meyer and Executive Chairman Hector Ruiz both taking a 20 percent cut. In the U.S. and Canada, executives that … Read more

Samsung Electronics is reconfiguring four divisions into two, in a move to bring its consumer products under one roof and its components business under another, according to a report Friday in The Wall Street Journal

The electronics giant will house such areas as its TVs, cell phones, and other consumer electronics into one group, while the components division will now include its liquid crystal displays and semiconductors, according to the report.

Samsung's restructuring comes at a time when a number of companies are retooling their operations in an effort to minimize the effect of a slowdown in corporate IT spending … Read more

IT spending worldwide is expected to slip 3 percent this year, with computer makers taking the brunt of the decline, according to a Forrester Research report released Tuesday.

Global IT spending is predicted to drop to $1.66 trillion this year, marking the first time in seven years the industry has not grown, according to the report, which used U.S. dollars as its form of measurement.

"Our forecast for 2009 rests on the assumptions that the economic recession in the U.S. and other major economies will start to end in the second half of 2009," Andrew … Read more

Intel will bring out a new Core-architecture processor for lower-cost ultra-thin laptops later this year, according to Intel sources at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The processors will distinguish themselves by targeting a price segment below pricey ultra-portables, which typically start at around $1,500 and range all the way up to $3,000--and higher in some cases. The processors will not compete with the Atom processor that powers Netbooks, which usually top out at $500.

In this sense, the new chips will be comparable to Advanced Micro Devices' recently announced Athlon Neo processor for ultra-thin laptops priced … Read more

The Consumer Electronics Show tends to be about small gadgets, the kind that fit in the hand or a pocket, or at least don't take up too much space on a desk or TV stand.

For Advanced Micro Devices, however, CES 2009 was an opportunity to talk about a supercomputer, the sort of high-tech machinery that even today tends to require at least a modest-sized room.

AMD said Thursday that by the second half of the year, it will be ready to go with the massively parallel "Fusion Render Cloud" supercomputer. And where supercomputers typically are used … Read more