Business Tech

National Semi to cut a fourth of workforce

National Semiconductor said Wednesday it would slash 1,725 jobs, or about one-fourth if its workforce, as earnings dropped sharply in its most recent quarter.

The Santa Clara, Calif.,-based company reported on Wednesday that its fiscal third-quarter profit plummeted 71 percent, to $21.1 million from $72.9 million a year ago. Revenue dropped 36 percent to $292.4 million.

Job cuts will take place across the company, which currently has a workforce of about 6,500, and will involve, in coming months, the shuttering of facilities in Arlington, Texas, and Suzhou, China.

The chipmaker will incur charges of $… Read more

Fusion-io touts 'fastest' solid-state drive

Fusion-io on Wednesday announced the IoDrive Duo, which the company claims is the fastest to date. Fusion-io also claims Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak as its chief scientist.

Targeted primarily at business applications such as database servers, capacities range from 160 gigabytes to 640 gigabytes. And by the second half of this year, this will increase to 1.28 terabytes.

The boards are based on PCI Express data bus and can sustain up to 20 gigabits per second of raw throughput--many times the rate of fast hard-disk drives. Sustained read bandwidth is 1,500 megabytes per second, while sustained write bandwidth … Read more

Layoffs to hit another Dell plant

An assembly plant in North Carolina will be next on Dell's streak of cost-cutting moves resulting in layoffs.

Dell is laying off workers, but the company will not give the total number and location of all employees affected. Dell did confirm that some of those affected are from the Winston-Salem, N.C., plant.

These layoffs are just the latest in a string of job cuts at the PC maker over the last year. The company laid out a goal in 2008 to cut its costs by $3 billion, which has resulted in plant closings and manufacturing being outsourced to … Read more

Israeli VC funds to face steep drop in '09

Israeli venture capitalists are expected this year to raise $300 million, setting the stage for a second consecutive year of decline, according to figures released Wednesday by the IVC Research Center.

Israeli venture capital funds are expected this year to post a 62 percent decline over last year, when $793 million was raised.

And should Israeli venture capital funds generate only $300 million, it would put it on par with levels not seen since 2003 to 2004.

Last year, Israeli venture capital funds declined 30 percent over the previous year, when $1.14 billion was raised.

But despite the two … Read more

SAP to offer corporate apps on iPhone

Corporate software makers SAP and Sybase are teaming up to make it easier for business users to access SAP's software on mobile devices such as Apple's iPhone.

SAP, which is the world's biggest maker of business management software, is already working with Research In Motion to develop applications for the BlackBerry. But now SAP says it will extend its software to other devices like the iPhone.

Sybase, which provides database software to large companies, already sells programs that let users access corporate applications and information on their mobile devices. But now it says it will work closely … Read more

Markets soar, tech stocks post doube-digit gains

Tech stocks soared Tuesday, as the broader markets surged ahead on news that Citigroup generated an operating profit for the first two months this year.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 379.44 points to end the day up 5.80 percent at 6,926.49. And the Nasdaq climbed 89.64 points to close the session up 7 percent at 1,358.28.

Technology stocks also surged ahead, with the CNET Tech Index climbing 67.84 points to jump ahead by 7.35 percent to 990.66.

Within the tech sector, Adobe Systems jumped 10.37 percent to close … Read more

Tech job postings fall 40 percent in March

Tech job postings fell 40.4 percent in March over year ago figures, with most of the decline coming from full-time positions, according to a report released Tuesday by tech career site Dice.com.

Dice, which collects its figures at the start of each month, noted tech job postings fell to 54,301 in March, down from 91,080 a year earlier. The decline in job postings comes at a time when the nation's unemployment rate has worsened, reaching 8.1 percent in February.

According to the Dice report, full-time job postings dropped 44.2 percent to 35,570 … Read more

Jive and the battle for the social enterprise

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

Jive Software wants to be the backbone for all things collaborative in the enterprise, but it could run ultimately into tough competition from the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM.

On Tuesday, Jive launched Social Business Software 3.0, a suite it calls an enterprise-class armada of collaborative apps. Jive SBS 3.0, available by the end of the first quarter, is designed to focus on employee engagement, marketing and sales, customer support, and innovation and to foster collaboration internally and externally.

Jive SBS 3.0 will also add centralized … Read more

Nvidia launches graphics chip venture fund

Nvidia on Tuesday is launching the GPU Ventures Program, an initiative to identify and invest in early stage companies that use the graphics processor for visual and high-performance computing.

Nvidia is formalizing a process that it has engaged in for a number of years, Jeff Herbst, vice president of business development at Nvidia, said in a phone interview. Herbst has been involved in strategic partnerships at Nvidia for seven and a half years. (GPU stands for graphics processing unit.)

"We're looking at companies that are building businesses around the GPU. Whether they be 3D GUIs (graphical user interfaces), … Read more