intel

Making sense of tech's winter of discontent

Correction, 2:05 p.m. PST: This blog initially misstated Google's 52-week high. It is $747.

On his way to China last week, RSA's top executive, Art Coviello, stopped off in San Francisco for a meet-and-greet with customers in the financial sector. What with all the pyrotechnics on Wall Street, you'd think the banks would be cutting back spending on everything from encryption software--RSA's bread and butter--to thumb tacks.

Maybe that's happening and they're just not 'fessing up, but Coviello says he's not seeing evidence of a big pullback in technology spending.

Like … Read more

Eye-tracker lets you get location information by staring

Someday soon, you might be able to figure out where you are in the world by staring.

Researchers from South Korea's Yonsei University will present a paper at the International Solid State Circuits Conference next week on a system that spits out two-dimensional coordinates for the object or place that a person is focusing on. The same group has worked on several eye interfaces in the past, mostly for people with disabilities. By integrating eye interfaces with GPS information, users can apparently get geographic information. The group presents its paper on Monday, February 3.

ISSCC is one of the … Read more

Intel reaches back in time for its ultralow power chips

It appears that Intel has turned the clock back several years in terms of chip architecture to reduce power in the upcoming Silverthorne mobile chip.

At the International Solid States Circuits Conference next week, chip designers from the company will discuss a mobile processor based around the x86 Intel Architecture that uses an "in-order pipeline" among other features.

To most people, "in-order pipeline" doesn't mean doodly-squat, but in chip design it's a big deal. Chips with this sort of pipeline, sort of a microprocessor's assembly line, have to perform tasks in a specified … Read more

Recession-proof Red Hat?

As Wall Street gets nervous about a looming recession (and only perks up when the government throws more ill-advised ways for people to spend more money on the table), and as more and more companies give cautious to negative outlooks for the future (e.g., Intel), it's worth remembering something that Frank Lara of Stockmasters writes:

Well here's what should be turning investor's heads and help them not worry about selling enough iPods, iPhones, and just overall iRecessionDontNeedCrap items: Red Hat also raised its fiscal 2008 revenue outlook to between $521 million to $523 million, up from $510 million to $520 million.… Read more

SAP and Intel invest $15 million in Endeca

Endeca Technologies announced Wednesday it landed a $15 million investment from industry titans Intel and SAP, signaling yet another sign that enterprise search is gaining serious traction.

That investment appears a bargain, compared to the price Microsoft is paying for search company Fast Search & Transfer. Earlier this month, the software giant announced it would acquire Fast Search & Transfer in a deal valued at $1.2 billion, according to a report in the New York Times.

For Endeca, this $15 million investment adds to the more than $50 million the company has raised to date. Back in 2001, for … Read more

New open source venture funding and the importance of SAP Ventures and Intel Capital

I suppose the big news for me today, as an Alfresco employee, should be that we just closed a $9 million Series C round with SAP Ventures leading the round. But since we didn't need the money (not even remotely) and I didn't want the dilution, it's not my favorite news of the day. Let's just say that companies don't always raise money for the money.

I was actually much more intrigued to see Zenoss add $11 million in Series B funding. Or Intel Capital's Series A investment in REvolution Computing, which provides an open-source statistical tool with commercial support and leverages parallelism.

Perhaps the big story out of the Alfresco and REvolution investments is the activity of Intel and SAP in financing open-source companies.… Read more

Markets end in negative territory--again

Duck and cover. Wall Street ended in negative territory Friday, with the markets falling across the board for the fourth consecutive day. Although by the close, the drops were modest.

Investors held out hope at the beginning of the day, as stocks climbed higher in early morning trading. By mid-morning, the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 were all headed south. By the close however, the major indexes had fallen less than 1 percent. The Dow ended the day at 12,099.30, a drop of 59.91 points, while the Nasdaq closed at 2,340.02, down 6.… Read more

Poll: What's the best bang for my photo PC buck?

I'm going to buy a new desktop computer to feed my digital photography appetites, and it's time to let the wisdom of the crowds steer me in the right direction.

There are innumerable options, but there's one particular choice I'm wrestling with: is my money better spent on a PC with a dual-core processor or a quad-core chip with a lower clock frequency?

For the benefit of anybody else in my situation, I thought I'd seek expert guidance from Adobe Systems, Microsoft, Advanced Micro Devices, and Intel and publish the results, but I got conflicting … Read more

Intel still optimistic despite some economic uncertainty

Though cable news pundits may predict hard times ahead, reports from IBM and Intel for 2008 show the technology industry isn't ready to mimic the banking industry's financial woes just yet.

Intel announced its second consecutive record-breaking quarter Tuesday, though earnings just barely met the company's own projections.

The chipmaker reported its highest-ever fourth-quarter revenue of $10.7 billion and earnings of 38 cents per share. Intel set expectations for this quarter at between $10.5 billion and $11.1 billion, while analysts were anticipating revenue of $10.8 billion and earnings between 38 cents and 44 … Read more