Jeff Burt

Fresh off its spring developer conference, Intel Corp. is slashing the prices on its Pentium 4 desktop processors and Xeon server and workstation chips by as much as 21 percent. The price cuts come after the Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker last week at the Intel Developers Forum rolled out an aggressive Xeon road map […]

Sun Microsystems Inc., which earlier this month rolled out a blade server platform that will play a key part in the companys N1 data center strategy, will use processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in the x86 versions of the blades. Sun spokesperson Kasey Holman said the company will use AMDs 32-bit Athlon XP-M chip, […]

IBM is putting its most powerful Power4+ processor into its entry-level servers. The Armonk, N.Y., company on Friday will announce that it is installing its 1.45GHz Power4+ chip into its one- to four-way eServer p630 systems, the latest step in an initiative to outfit all of its Unix-based servers with the new chip. IBM installed […]

Chip maker National Semiconductor Corp. is cutting about 5 percent of its workforce and selling two business units in an effort to save money and streamline operations. National Semiconductor will cut about 500 jobs from its global workforce of about 10,000, the Santa Clara, Calif., company announced on Thursday. The company also is looking to […]

Cisco Systems Inc. is becoming a bigger player in Hewlett-Packard Co.s data center virtualization strategy. HP currently uses Ciscos Catalyst 6500 Series switches, PIX 515 Series firewalls and 2950 routers in its UDC (Utility Data Center) architecture, the cornerstone of HPs utility computing initiative. On Wednesday, the two companies announced that Cisco, of San Jose, […]

Micron Technology Inc., one of the top memory chip makers in the world, will lay off 10 percent of its more than 18,000 employees as it works to cut expenses. The layoffs are part of an overall cost reduction push by the Boise, Idaho, company as it invests in its 0.11-micron chip-manufacturing technology in a […]

Phoenix Technologies Inc., a leading BIOS manufacturer for more than two decades, is branching out with a plan to create a secure applications layer between the BIOS and the operating system in PCs, servers and mobile devices. Dubbed the Phoenix Core Managed Environment, or cME, the technology is designed to be built into a protected […]

Hewlett-Packard Co. is aiming to increase power and performance for users of its Intel- and RISC-based servers. At the Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, Calif., this week, HP will unveil a new chip set, the sx1000, for the next generation of 64-bit Itanium 2 processors—code-named Madison—and the next-generation PA RISC chip, the PA-8800—code-named Mako. […]

First-quarter shipments of PCs should grow 4.8 percent over the same period last year, and 7.9 percent over the course of the year, according to research firm Gartner Dataquest Inc. In a report issued this week, the San Jose, Calif., company said it expects 33.2 million PCs to ship in the first quarter and 138.7 […]

A new wave of blade servers from several top-tier companies will include attributes more commonly associated with full-size servers, such as streamlined manageability. NEC Solutions America Inc., RLX Technologies Inc. and IBM are each readying new blade, or ultradense, servers that offer such high-end capabilities as fault tolerance, system management and storage, respectively. The moves, […]

IBM, in an effort to expand the use of its PowerPC processors, is opening up the licensing of the chip to enable third-parties to build products for it. The technology giant also will create a version of the chip that will become its standard network processor. “Our goal with the PowerPC has been to continue […]

Dell Computer Corp. ended a strong fiscal year with a fourth quarter that saw income, revenue and shipments all jump at least 21 percent. For the quarter ended Jan. 31, the Round Rock, Texas, computer maker earned $603 million—a 32 percent increase over the same period last year—on more than $9.7 billion in revenue. That […]