Processors

SAN FRANCISCO--There is a light at the end of the dark financial tunnel, Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini said onstage at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday morning. And he brought out a shiny new toy to prove it.

"All the smart people I've talked to in this area suggest that the U.S. is in a two- to three-quarter recession," Otellini said, though he added that the current economic slowdown is "the deepest one I've seen in my lifetime" and predicted that morale may stay low for longer because unemployment may … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices announced Wednesday it had cut 500 employees, or about 3 percent of its workforce, in an effort to reduce expenses.

This is the second round of job cuts this year at the troubled chipmaker. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD announced in April that it would cut 10 percent of its workforce, or about 1,650 jobs at the time.

The current round of job cuts comes on the heels of a management and structural upheaval at the company. AMD CEO Hector Ruiz announced in July that he would step down from the helm of the company, and that … Read more

Circuit City Stores announced Monday it plans to close 155 stores and lay off 17 percent of its workforce in the U.S., as it aims to restructure its business amid a tightening credit market and downturn in business.

Over the past few weeks, the retailer's financial health has become more dire and, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, was considering restructuring moves as a means to avoid a Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy filing.

The struggling electronics retailer noted in its announcement that not only have its sales dropped amid an economic slowdown and loss in … Read more

Intel said Tuesday that solid-state drives can extend battery life up to 30 minutes compared to hard disk drives.

Add the speed advantage of solid state drives and that's two strikes against hard disks. Price parity--strike three--is still a ways off, however. That--and the fact that hard drives offer much larger capacities--will keep hard drives competitive next year.

For now, Intel is evangelizing the benefits of speed and power efficiency.

Most independent benchmarks show that solid state drives perform better than hard disk drives. In some cases, a lot better. That's a given now. One area, however, that … Read more

A wide swath of technology stocks posted double-digit gains Tuesday, as the broader markets surged to exceptionally high levels as investors anticipated an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve.

Cisco Systems, Amazon.com, Dell, and Comcast were just some of the tech players whose shares crested above 10 percent gains at the market's close, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped a whopping 889.35 points to 9,065.12, up 10.9 percent.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 143.57 points, or 9.5 percent, to close at 1,649.47, while the S&P 500 soared … Read more

Broadcom on Tuesday said that it completed the acquisition of Advanced Micro Devices' digital TV chip business--at a discount to the original price.

On August 25, the two companies announced a price for the unit of $192.8 million. But Broadcom now expects that AMD's digital TV business will have fourth-quarter revenue of between $15 million and $20 million, lower than previously expected, the Irvine, Calif.-based company said.

Accordingly, the price has been slashed to $141.5 million, about a 27 percent reduction from the original price.

Broadcom had said in August that AMD's DTV unit would … Read more

Call it the elephant approach to sizing up the health of tech.

In two separate reports released Monday, Forrester Research CEO George Colony and Mayfield Fund weighed in on where they believe tech is headed in this challenging climate.

Colony, who took hold of the proverbial elephant's trunk, noted in his CounterIntuitive blog that the current recession will likely result in a tech spending slowdown, but nothing near the levels seen in the post-bubble-burst era of 2001 to 2003.

He noted CEOs and CIOs are indicating they plan to "change their way" out of the current economic … Read more

The investment firm gobbling up shares of Sun Microsystems might look tough, but it usually avoids playing hardball with executives.

Sun got a wake-up call last week from its largest single investor, Southeastern Asset Management, which added the hardware maker to its list of companies for which it has switched from being a passive investor to an active one, with regard to corporate governance, operations management, and increasing shareholder value. But while the road ahead may be bumpy with this activist shareholder, which had $34 billion in assets under management as of the end of September, it will likely be … Read more

Update at 4:45 p.m. PDT, with information from Foundry's proxy filing on adjourning the meeting to get more shareholder votes.

Foundry Networks delayed a meeting to vote on its merger with Brocade Communications Systems until next week, after failing to get enough investors to support the deal.

Foundry called a special shareholders meeting at 10 a.m. PDT on Friday to vote on its proposed merger with Brocade, which was valued at approximately $3 billion when it was announced in July.

But shortly before 2 p.m., Foundry announced it would adjourn the meeting until Wednesday at … Read more