Business Tech

AMD: Servers strong, mobile muted

Advanced Micro Devices' server roadmap is solid but its mainstream mobile lineup is languishing.

First, the good news. These days AMD is walking the talk. This is a radical change from the AMD of 2007-2008, which always seemed to have a hopper full of Intel-vanquishing paper processors that, if they did materialize, disappointed.

Fast forward to AMD's Tuesday earnings announcement, when the company said it was actually moving up the introduction its most sophisticated processor, the six-core Istanbul, to June.

And AMD has proved its silicon mettle at large server customers such as IBM and Sun Microsystems--the latter's … Read more

Qualcomm delays earnings, cites Broadcom discussions

Qualcomm has delayed its second-quarter earnings statement because of advanced settlement discussions with Broadcom, the company said Wednesday.

Qualcomm is delaying its earnings statement until Monday due to discussions with Broadcom "regarding a global settlement of all disputes between the parties which, if reached, would have an impact on the Qualcomm's financial results for the fiscal second quarter," the company said.

Revenue and operating income for the second quarter of fiscal 2009, excluding the potential impact of the Broadcom agreement, met or exceeded prior guidance, Qualcomm said.

In related news, on March 16, the U.S. District … Read more

AMD reports loss, cautious on PC sales

Updated at 3:20 p.m. PDT throughout.

Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday reported a net first-quarter loss of $416 million, or 66 cents a share, though revenue exceeded estimates.

AMD also refuted Intel statements that PC sales have hit bottom, though the company said inventory problems are improving somewhat.

This loss exceeds the loss reported one year ago, when the chipmaker posted a loss of $364 million, or 60 cents a share.

Revenue hit $1.18 billion, down 21 percent from the $1.5 billion posted last year, but better than reported estimates from analysts who had expected revenue … Read more

My reaction to Sun being bought? Profound sadness

By now we've all read hundreds of opinions on why Oracle bought Sun Microsystems and whether this is a good or bad decision. I, too, have an opinion, but for once I'm keeping quiet. Rather, I want to reflect on the sadness I feel as Sun becomes an acquired memory like other pioneering tech companies have.

When I started in the tech business over 20 years ago, it was extremely young and exciting. If you went for a drink after work, you would find a saloon full of folks from Digital Equipment Corp., Data General, EMC, Lotus, McCormick &… Read more

A Matrix of HP blades

Few things are more annoying to PR folks than being all revved up for a big announcement, and then some big event comes along and sucks all the air out of the tech news cycle for the day.

That's what happened to Hewlett-Packard on Monday. The company announced its BladeSystem Matrix. And Oracle announced its decision to acquire Sun Microsystems.

Guess which won the coverage game. (And, yes, I'm one of the guilty parties.)

On a normal day But on a normal day, Matrix would have, or at least should have, generated a lot of interest. Here's … Read more

VMware unveils its cloud OS

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

VMware announced on Tuesday its cloud operating system--dubbed vSphere 4--with plans for general availability in the second quarter.

With the effort, VMware is attempting to bridge virtualized data centers--now known as "private clouds"--and growing cloud computing services from the likes of Amazon.com and others. However, this bridging process is a work in progress due to the lack of standards. VMware's big pitch is that vSphere can run your data center and allow you to bridge out when external resources are needed.

John Gilmartin, director of … Read more

Nvidia 'pro' graphics hook up with Apple Mac Pro

Nvidia aims to fortify the Mac Pro moniker with its own "Pro" graphics.

The Quadro FX 4800, packing 192 processing cores, targets professional graphics customers, including scientists, engineers, and designers.

The Mac card features a standard 3-pin stereo connector for 3D stereoscopic imaging, critical to many core professional Mac applications, Nvidia said.

The 4800 also features a large 1.5GB frame buffer (used to refresh the on-screen image) and memory bandwidth up to 76.8 gigabytes per second. By comparison, the Nvidia GeForce GT 120, which is currently offered by Apple as a standard graphics card on the … Read more

OLPC laptop drops AMD for Via

The One Laptop per Child project's XO laptop will switch to a Via processor as part of a general hardware refresh.

Generation 1.5 of the XO machine will have the same industrial design as the original model, but will use a Via C7-M processor, John Watlington, OLPC's vice president of hardware development, wrote in a post on Friday. Currently the XO, which is aimed at educational markets in developing countries, uses an AMD Geode processor.

"The design goal is to provide an overall update of the system within the same ID and external appearance," Watlington … Read more

Oracle reels in Sun for $7.4 billion

After weeks of speculation about whether Sun was for sale, it turns out the buyer isn't IBM, but software heavyweight Oracle.

Oracle buys integration challenge along with Sun Acquiring Sun would give Oracle a powerful injection of new technology, but the sales pitch of integrated hardware and software has fallen on deaf ears so far. (Posted in Business Tech by Stephen Shankland) April 20, 2009 8:45 AM PDT

Oracle gets Sun for $7.4 billion, MySQL for $0 Oracle's bid for Sun takes the industry back to the olden days of integrated hardware and software, and in … Read more