chips

Correction, 2:44 p.m. PST: This story initially misstated the day Nvidia slashed its revenue guidance by up to 50 percent. It was January 13.

Nvidia posted a fourth-quarter loss of just under $148 million and a 60 percent drop in revenue as demand plummeted.

On Tuesday, the largest graphics chip supplier reported a loss of $147.7 million, or 27 cents a share, compared with a profit of $257 million, or 42 cents a share, in the year-earlier period.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company posted revenue of $481.1 million, down 60 percent from the $1.2 … Read more

Despite being slammed by the financial crisis, Intel is not slowing down. It made this crystal clear in a chip technology briefing on Tuesday, putting rivals on notice that the competition will only get more intense.

The world's largest chipmaker is accelerating introduction of new chips, particularly silicon targeted at laptop computers. Intel is achieving this by moving quickly to processors based on next-generation 32-nanometer manufacturing process technology and investing heavily to keep its most advanced chip factories humming, as CEO Paul Otellini pointed out in a speech in Washington, D.C., earlier today.

In a nutshell, this means … Read more

CSR, formerly Cambridge Silicon Radio, has bought SiRF, an American GPS chip company, in a share transaction valued at 91 million British pounds ($132.7 million), giving SiRF shareholders 27 percent of the new, enlarged CSR. Two SiRF directors will get seats on the board.

SiRF is best known for its SiRFstar range of GPS chips, which are used by TomTom, Garmin, Palm, and others. CSR has traditionally specialized in Bluetooth chips, more recently concentrating on highly integrated all-in-one circuits that combine Bluetooth with other radio functions like Wi-Fi and FM reception. Lately, it has been promoting 802.11n for … Read more

At the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, Intel will present 15 papers, with a renewed emphasis on integrating more functions into one chip--and less focus on gigahertz. Intel is especially focusing on squeezing more sophisticated wireless silicon into small devices.

"The trend of using smaller transistors to build larger microprocessor cores with higher operating frequency is coming to an end," Mark Bohr, an Intel senior fellow, said Wednesday.

The chipmaker will highlight research on what it is proclaiming as the "new system-on-a-chip (SoC) era," which it describes as requiring "a fundamental shift in the way semiconductor … Read more

Memory chip prices shot up on Monday--a welcome bit of news for beleaguered chipmakers, who have been caught in a relentless downward price spiral.

Prices for DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory), the main memory in PCs, shot up as much as 26 percent, according to data posted on DRAMeXchange. A number of reports have attributed this to the bankruptcy of Germany-based chipmaker Qimonda, and seem to indicate that this will relieve some of the pressure on prices caused by oversupply.

The price of certain DDR2 (Double Data Rate, second generation) memory chips rose as much as 28 percent Monday. Flash … Read more

Jon Peddie Research said Thursday that estimated graphics chip shipments in the fourth quarter plummeted 34 percent from the third quarter--a very atypical month-to-month decline.

"The fourth quarter is usually a positive quarter for the computer industry. There has obviously been some inventory problems in the quarter," said Jon Peddie, president of Tiburon Calif.-based research firm, in a statement.

And it will get worse. "We're...bracing for what will probably be the worst Q1 and Q2 decline we've seen since the Internet bubble pop of 2000," he warned.

Total shipments of GPUs for … Read more

Europe's largest chipmaker, STMicroelectronics, has reported a $366 million net loss for the fourth quarter of 2008, and has said it will lay off as many as 4,500 jobs in a cost-cutting drive.

The results for the European firm were released on Tuesday. The fourth quarter of the previous year saw a net income of $20 million. It is not yet known how many of the layoffs will take place in the UK--STMicro employs just over 430 employees in the UK, with a sales office in Marlow and research and development sites in Bristol, Edinburgh, Fleet and Daventry.… Read more

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

Qualcomm on Tuesday said it has acquired "certain graphics and multimedia technology assets" from Advanced Micro Devices' handheld business.

The acquisition was only for $65 million, so we're not talking a huge deal, but what used to constitute AMD's handheld business is off the chipmaker's books, as it focuses on its core PC and graphics semiconductor markets.

Qualcomm says it will take AMD's graphic assets and intellectual property, and integrate it with its system on a chip products. Qualcomm has offered jobs to the … Read more

Updated at 10:12 a.m. PST, with more information about AMD's financial performance.

Advanced Micro Devices announced Friday it would slash its workforce by 9 percent and institute temporary salary cuts, from its executive chairman on down to hourly workers.

AMD will cut 1,100 positions in the first quarter through attrition and layoffs, as one of its measures to cut costs during these recessionary times.

The chipmaker will also institute temporary salary cuts, with its CEO Dirk Meyer and Executive Chairman Hector Ruiz both taking a 20 percent cut. In the U.S. and Canada, executives that … Read more