Scott Ferguson

Sun’s Chip Chief Departs

David Yen, executive vice president of Sun Microsystems’ Microelectronics Division, is leaving the original equipment manufacturer for a new position at Juniper Networks. Yen’s department comes less than a year after he helped bring Sun’s UltraSPARC T2 processor – also known as Niagara 2 – onto the market. Sun announced that Yen left the company […]

Intel Offering Low-Watt Xeons

Intel is expanding its lineup of 45-nanometer processors with a pair of quad-core Xeon chips that run at 50 watts, the company announced March 25. The two new Xeons, the L5410 and the L5420, now give the company more than 35 different microprocessors within its Penryn family of 45-nm chips. Intel first introduced this line […]

Gartner: PC Shipments Subject to Economic Whims

Worldwide PC shipments are expected to increase almost 11 percent in 2008, but concerns about the sluggish U.S. economy could push that number down into the single digits by year’s end, according to the latest research from Gartner. Even with the U.S. economy slowing down in 2008, Gartner analysts believe that shipments of notebooks and […]

Sun Gets $44 Million to Fund Chip Research

Sun Microsystems is getting a $44.3 million boost from the government to develop a new way to connect microprocessors together using lasers instead of traditional copper wire. The company and the U.S. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the research section of the Department of Defense, announced the funding March 24. The money will pay […]

VMware Invests $100M in India

VMware plans to invest $100 million in India over the next two years, adding more engineers and developers to its staff and increasing its research and development operations with a new facility. During a March 24 news conference in Bangalore, India, CEO Diane Greene said the investment would include an 82,000-sqaure-foot development center in the […]

Marathon Offers Low-Cost Fault Tolerance for VMs

Marathon Technologies is looking to lock down virtual environments. The Littleton, Mass., company, which is best known for creating high-availability environments for Microsoft applications, is now turning its attention to creating secure, fault-tolerant virtual environments. Marathon released the beta of its EverRun VM software March 24, with general availability slated for the end of April. […]

Dell: Solid State Drives Work Fine

Dell says its solid state drives are working just fine. Officials with the PC vendor are denying a report released by Avian Securities that the SSDs the company offers as an option with many of its PCs have a high rate of failure and suffer from performance problems. Dell also denied that the return rate […]

HP Embeds Citrix XenServer in ProLiant Systems

Hewlett-Packard is adding another virtualization option to its line of ProLiant systems. Company officials announced March 19 that they will begin embedding a co-developed version of Citrix’s XenServer virtualization software into 10 different ProLiant systems starting March 31. They also have developed a set of management tools that will create and control the various virtual […]

AMD Denies Reports of Layoffs

Advanced Micro Devices is denying reports in several publications that it is preparing to cut 5 percent of its 16,000-person work force after less-than-expected sales in the first quarter of 2008. In an e-mail, Michael Silverman, a spokesman for the Sunnyvale, Calif., company, wrote, “We did not have a workforce reduction.” He declined to comment […]

Big Blue Offers Cloud Computing in Emerald Isle

IBM is breaking ground in Dublin, Ireland, for one of the first cloud computing centers to serve users in Europe and beyond. The Cloud Computing Center is being developed in conjunction with the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland, a government agency that looks for overseas investment, with the goal of creating a major hub for […]