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IBM cuts chip plant pay, following job cuts

IBM is cutting pay for workers at chip manufacturing plants in New York and Vermont. This comes on the heels of job cuts at the Vermont facility.

Some shift workers at IBM's semiconductor plant in Essex Junction, Vt., will see net pay reductions of up to 10 percent in early 2009, said Jeff Couture, an IBM spokesperson.

In effect, a 20 percent premium for shift workers is being eliminated, according to Couture. To mitigate employee earnings losses, IBM is making a one-time base pay increase, he added. However, even with this increase, the "net for employees will range … Read more

Chipmaker paints bleak economic picture

Chartered Semiconductor, which builds chips for companies like IBM and Samsung, says it is looking at a bleak economic picture for the coming months.

Update: Infineon Technologies, a German chipmaker, announced Friday that it would lay off 3,000 workers due to the "levels of risk in the current market conditions."

Chartered CEO Chia Song Hwee issued a cautionary statement when the company announced earnings late Thursday afternoon. "We continue to be cautious about the worsening economic situation," he said, adding that Chartered is "dealing with the challenges of...crude oil price increases" and &… Read more

Intel flash dicey, Netbooks solid

Comments by CEO Paul Otellini and CFO Stacy Smith during Intel's 2008 first-quarter earnings conference call on Tuesday cast a pall over the chipmaker's flash business while boosting the outlook of Netbook chips.

First, a quick inventory of the comments made by Otellini and Smith about Intel's NAND flash memory business. Overall Intel gross margins were affected by collapsing prices in the NAND market. Intel is currently in a joint NAND chip manufacturing partnership with Micron Technology. NAND flash is used in large-capacity storage devices which are, in most cases, interchangeable with hard disk drives. Intel said earlier this year … Read more

AMD planning layoffs with Phenom update?

Advanced Micro Devices is getting set to launch updated Phenom processors amid rumors that the chipmaker is reducing its workforce by 5 percent.

AMD is slated to begin shipping quad-core Phenom 9850, 9750, 9650, 9550, and 9150 processors in the coming weeks, according to sources close to the company. The "50" branding scheme indicates that the processors are the B3 version of the Phenom that fixes the "TLB" bug. This was first reported in DigiTimes.

Later, AMD will also ship updated triple-core processors, including the 8750 and 8560. Updated triple-core processors will not necessarily be B3 … Read more