Scientists at IBM’s Almaden research center have built the biggest artificial brain ever–a cell-by-cell simulation of the human visual cortex: 1.6 billion virtual neurons connected by 9 trillion synapses.
Bank of America/Merrill Lynch chip analyst Sumit Dhanda this morning turned cautious on semiconductor stocks, downgrading a slew of stocks; his colleague Daniel Heyler made a comparable on the foundries, lower ratings on a number of stocks.
“We are downgrading our view on the sector given unfavorable indications from our cyclical framework,” he writes.
It took a mediator–and a trip to Maui–to break the biggest logjam in landmark settlement talks between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.
On Monday, researchers will release a twice-yearly list of the 500 biggest computers in the world. The latest rankings should provide some new clues about high tech’s relentless speed race, and how it’s being funded.
Roth Capital Partners analyst Arnab Chanda this morning lowered his rating on several chip stocks to “Hold” from “Buy,” citing the risk of a modest inventory build given high projected margins and growth at Intel, Marvell, Nvidia and others.
Broadcom shares are down sharply in late trading after the chip maker posted Q3 earnings. For the quarter, the company reported revenue of $1.254 billion, up 20.6 percent from the second quarter, down 3.4 percent from a year ago, and ahead of the Street at $1.16 billion.
Comments by Advanced Micro Devices yesterday apparently have triggered worries on the Street that the PC manufacturers, in their zealous optimism about the prospects for Microsoft Windows 7, may have built too many PCs.
As I noted last night, AMD said on its post-earnings conference call with the Street that it expects a less-than-seasonal sequential increase in Q4 revenues, due in part to the “the big build we’ve seen of PCs in anticipation of the Win 7 launch.”
When Paul Otellini, Intel’s famously reserved CEO first heard the news, he got quiet.
After a 13-year run–marked by some dead ends–Brian Halla thinks he finally established a winning formula at National Semiconductor. So he’s stepping down.
Halla, 63, said Friday he will give up the CEO title at the chip maker on Nov. 30 to Donald Macleod, a 61-year-old Scot who has been at National since 1978 and was serving as president and chief operating officer.
Despite Apple’s investments in developing its own custom ARM microchips in place of using Intel’s Atom mobile processors, the company has reached out to Intel as a partner to drive the adoption of the new Light Peak specification for optical cabling.
It was a big deal when Texas Instruments announced plans in 2003 for a massive chip factory in a suburb of Dallas, its home town. Six years later, the company is finally preparing for production there–under a strategy that has changed dramatically.
Global chip revenues in the third quarter are getting a big boost from inventory restocking, according to the research firm iSuppli.
According to iSuppli, in the second quarter inventories dwindled to “lean, but appropriate levels,” in a reversal of the excess inventory levels reached in 2008.
Hardware freaks flocked to San Francisco last week to hear Intel talk about microprocessors, the electronic brains in PCs. But Advanced Micro Devices made some pretty brainy claims of its own.
Shares of solar panel technology maker First Solar (FSLR) are reversing course this evening, falling to $170 after briefly going as high as $189 following a clean Q2 beat. What’s spooked people are the company’s remarks on a conference call this evening about growing uncertainty in its German market.
There goes the rally in contract chip makers. Shanghai, China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International and Taiwan’s United Microelectronics both this morning beat profit and sales estimates for their most recent quarters and forecast above consensus, but both saw shares punished nevertheless.
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