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News

• Intel to invest up to $8B in U.S. chip plants

  Intel Tuesday announced plans to invest between $6 billion and $8 billion to upgrade multiple computer chip manufacturing plants in the U.S., and to build a new facility in Oregon.

• AMD announcing next-generation graphics cards this week

  Advanced Micro Devices plans to announce its second-generation of DirectX 11 graphics cards this week, and also to show off its latest hybrid Fusion chip as the company tries to jump ahead of rivals Intel and Nvidia.

• Researchers one step closer to 'bootless' computer

  Physicists at the University of California at Riverside have made a breakthrough in developing a "spin computer," which would combine logic with nonvolatile memory, bypassing the need for computers to boot up.

• AMD waits for tablet dust to settle

  In the wake of the success of the Apple iPad, there seems to be a virtually endless line of competing tablets on the horizon. Most of the attention is focused on the operating system platform that drives the tablet, but the battle for the processor that provides the tablets engine is also heating up. As chip manufacturers compete to establish a presence in tablets, though, AMD will be conspicuously absent from the melee.

• AMD to target tablet market with its chips

  Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday said it wants to put its chips in tablets, relenting after months of denying any interest in that market.

• AMD server CTO: Core wars will subside

  While today AMD and Intel compete over which company's processors will have the most cores, this battle will not last indefinitely, according to Donald Newell, AMD's chief technology officer for servers. In its place will be a heated competition over which chips will have the most useful on-die specialized computing capabilities.

• Broadcom to buy 4G chipmaker Beceem for $316M

  Broadcom has agreed to acquire Beceem Communications, a maker of chips for 4G LTE and WiMax devices, for $US316 million in cash.

• IBM to turbo-charge more servers with accelerators

  IBM is putting more energy in building computers that mix CPUs with specialized accelerators to diversify its servers and target specific workloads, an IBM executive said this week.

• Semiconductor revenue forecast gets a trim

  Despite what had been growing excitement about the semiconductor market this year, one research company is lowering its chip revenue forecast for 2010.

• Intel will not position the Atom for server markets

  Intel will not position its Atom processor for the server market, even as some vendors are building servers around collections of hundreds of low-power Atom processors, a company executive said.

• Arm plans to add multithreading to chip design

  Arm plans to add multithreading capabilities to future architectures as it tries to boost the performance of its processors, a company representative said on Tuesday.

• Tilera: Server with 800 cores may ship next year

  A server with 800 processor cores could ship next year with Tilera's next-generation 100-core chips inside, a company executive said Monday.

• Tablet, phone software developers face multicore challenge

  Writing applications for devices like tablets and smartphones could become more challenging as CPUs and hardware accelerators are added to mobile chips, experts agreed at a processor conference on Monday.

• OCZ unveils next-gen SSD, promising lower price, higher performance

  OCZ Technology today unveiled the next generation of its consumer-class solid state drive (SSD), the 2.5-in Onyx 2 series, which it said is faster, more durable and more affordable that its predecessor.

• Weak server chip shipments on the horizon, analysts say

  The server market is showing signs of weakening, which could lead to a downturn in server chip shipments, further affecting the revenue of chip makers already hampered by lackluster demand for home PCs, financial analysts said Friday.