Advanced Micro, Hynix to gain share in 2006: iSuppli
128197
Advanced Micro Devices Inc.  and  Hynix Semiconductor Inc.  are poised to join the  ranks of the world's top 10 chip makers this year, research  firm iSuppli said on Tuesday.
454309
Win some, lose some AMD lost market share to arch-rival Intel in 2006, but the smaller chip-maker nonetheless managed to make small gains in the desktop and laptop segments, the latest figures from market watcher Mercury Research reveal.â¦
649045
InfoWorld - After months of delays, Advanced Micro Devices&#39; latest processor, a quad-core server chip called&#160;Barcelona, is at last expected to hit the market&#160;Monday.
27421
(InfoWorld) - Despite a revenue plunge of 9.5 percent, Intel Corp. will retain its title as king of the hill for the worldwide semiconductor industry, posting annual revenue of $31.3 billion for 2006, according to Gartner. Intel's top competitors will post much better numbers, all recording double-digit revenue growth as they enjoy strong sales in dynamic RAM (DRAM) memory chips, wireless semiconductors and NAND flash, according to preliminary results for 2006 that Gartner released Thursday. Overall, the market is set to grow 11.3 percent to $261.4 billion. Intel's sinking results in this rising tide will cause its market share to sag from 14.7 percent in 2005 to 12 percent. The company was only able to record its 15th straight year as a market leader because it had banked such a large lead on smaller rivals like Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (with 7.9 percent market share) and Texas Instruments Inc. (4.5 percent). Intel's problem was that its competitor Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) sold superior processors through the third quarter, judging by the chips' balance of price and performance in the server and consumer enthusiast segments, Gartner said. Intel lost even more revenue as the two companies launched a price war, which hurt Intel more than AMD as the larger company. Meanwhile, Samsung strengthened its position as the industry's second-biggest vendor by selling more DRAM, static RAM (SRAM) and NAND flash chips than any other company. Samsung will grow 12.4 percent to reach revenues of $20.6 billion, followed by Texas Instruments growing 17.4 percent to $11.9 billion and Infineon Technologies AG growing 29 percent to reach $10.6 billion, Gartner said. The bottom half of the top 10 were all predicted to record revenue of single-digit billions, including STMicroelectronics NV, Toshiba Corp., Renesas Technology Corp., Hynix Semiconductor Inc., AMD and Freescale Semiconductor Inc. The semiconductor industry will grow more slowly in 2007, likely rising by a high single-digit percentage compared to its 11.3 percent rise in 2006, Gartner said. The high points of the coming year will include continuing strength in the DRAM market and strong consumer electronics sales.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
560920
Upcoming chips will lead to relatively inexpensive hardware, company says.
685298
Shares of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the world&#39;s second-largest maker of microprocessors for personal computers behind Intel Corp.
404358
(InfoWorld) - Software giant Microsoft is focusing on selling to global technology manufacturers with a software suite it promoted at a Silicon Valley forum on Thursday. Microsoft showed off 2007 versions of its Office software suite for business functions, SQL Server database management system, Office SharePoint Server program for project collaboration and other products at its first-ever Global High Tech Summit in Santa Clara, California. Microsoft hopes to grab a piece of a growing market for IT spending by technology manufacturers next year. Fifty-nine percent of high-tech manufacturers surveyed by AMR ResearchÂ said they planned to increase their IT spending in 2007, averaging a 4.1 percent increase. An earlier survey about 2006 plans had shown only 42 percent planned to increase their spending, and they said they would boost it by an average of just 3.2 percent. Companies have already invested in technology to automate manufacturing processes, but now they are investing to be able to adjust production to changes in demand, said Eric Austvold, research director at AMR, in Boston. "They want to know how you create an agile supply network that ramps up a product to volume [production] quickly," Austvold said. The quicker a company gets a product to market, the more units it can sell. Microsoft is targeting product development, supply chain management, customer relationship management and operational performance, said Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, to about 400 participants at the daylong forum. Microprocessor maker Advanced Micro DevicesÂ uses a variety of Windows-based software in its chip fabrication plants and will upgrade to the new Vista operating system when it becomes available next year, said Tom Sonderman, director of automated precision manufacturing technology for AMD, in Sunnyvale, California. "Once we get Vista and get into 64-bit computing, you begin to raise the bar on the things we can do," said Sonderman. "There is an ongoing desire for us to have more computing power in the fab." Also at the event, Microsoft and IntelÂ jointly proposed anÂ open, interoperable industry standardÂ for document sharing based on the Office Open XML formats. The two companies presented the proposal to RosettaNet, a technology standards group. The Microsoft-Intel standard conflicts with one promoted by Adobe Systems. "They pushed Adobe aside with this announcement," said AMR's Austvold. "Adobe has been doing this already with a proprietary standard. This announcement trumps that and says, 'We [Microsoft] have got a standard we think is more open,' [although] I think thatâs debatable."
546414
The chip giant has announced plans to buy a developer of digital-media creation software and services.
85731
Rumors that Dell may be considering Advanced Micro Devices&#39; server chips are again causing a stir. AMD&#39;s stock shot up Friday after press reports quoted Dell Chief Executive Officer Kevin Rollins saying his company is studying the possibility.
717426
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD)  , the world's second-largest maker of computer  microprocessors, said on Tuesday it expects its declining  market share to bottom out and return to an upward trend by the  end of the year.
569810
Intel&#39;s share of the booming flash market jumped 40.8 percent in the second quarter, according to market-research firm iSuppli Corp.
586752
Dual-core version won't be available until 2006, chip maker says.
66594
By Laurie J. Flynn  Advanced Micro Devices has said it is unlikely that the company will meet its target of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion in revenue for the first quarter, providing evidence that the chip maker's price war with Intel was continuing to take its toll.
650384
(InfoWorld) - Samsung Electronics held onto its title as the world's largest producer of DRAMÂ memory chips in 2006 despite a late charge by Hynix Semiconductor, according to a study released Thursday. Hynix leapfrogged Qimonda, jumping into second place by posting a 31 percent increase in DRAM bit shipments from the third to fourth quarter, while the market as a whole grew by only 14 percent in that time, according to iSuppli. In 2006, Samsung claimed DRAM revenues of $9.5 billion, 28 percent of the entire $33.9 billion market, iSuppli said. Hynix followed with 16.6 percent market share, leading Qimonda's 15.9 percent, Micron's 11 percent, and Elpida's 10.4 percent. All other producers were in single digits. Hardware vendors use DRAM semiconductor memory in a vast range of products, including PCs, printers, hard disk drives, mobile phones, digital cameras, televisions, and game consoles. Although demand will keep growing, iSuppli says slumping prices in 2007 will take the wind out of those sails, pushing revenue down despite rising sales. The vendors are more optimistic. Qimonda predicts that demand could rise in 2007 because of Microsoft's launch of its newÂ Windows Vista OS as well as other communication and consumer applications, according to the company's Jan. 23 earnings report. Likewise, Samsung predicts that a strong consumer electronics market will push demand for DRAM used in 2.5G and 3G handsets and in game consoles. DRAM vendors also hope to continue momentum by relying on technology advances, planning to shrink their chip architecture from 90 nanometers to 80nm and below in the short term and toÂ upgrade from current DDR2 design to DDR3 in coming years. Despite its dominant position, Samsung suffered in December asÂ one of its executives agreed to serve jail time and pay a large fineÂ as the result of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into price-fixing practices in the industry. The plea was the fifth from a Samsung executive and marked the 18th person from four vendors indicted since December 2003. The other companies charged were Hynix, Elpida, and Infineon (which has since spun off its DRAM division as Qimonda). Â
264958
Advanced Micro Devices Inc.   said on Thursday it will offer a new chip for laptop computers  and said it expects to be able to supply one third of the  market for computer microprocessors by 2008, stepping up its  challenge to rival Intel Corp.&#039;s  dominance.
564678
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is expected to migrate all of its CPU production to 90nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) processes in early 2005, according to sources at Taiwan motherboard makers, citing AMDâs latest roadmap.
372915
(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro Devices Inc. will continue to supply ATI graphics chips for PCs based on Intel Corp. microprocessors despite the fierce competition between the two companies, AMD's chief technology officer said in an interview. The Intel question loomed large after AMD bought ATI last year. Many believed that AMD would stop supporting Intel microprocessors with the ATI chips, and that Intel would encourage its customers to use its own graphics chips or those from other companies besides AMD. AMD CTO Phil Hester said at Computex last week that AMD will continue to supply ATI graphics products that work with Intel processors. It makes business sense for AMD to do so and there's still a healthy market for ATI products paired with Intel processors, he said. AMD also believes that the introduction of its Fusion chips in 2009, which will put graphics functions and the microprocessor on a single chip, will not spell the end for discrete graphics components, Hester said. That's good news for gamers and other people who want top-end multimedia performance for work or home applications. Graphics cards with discrete GPUs (graphics processing units) have always delivered far better performance than chips with graphics built in, such as PC chipsets. Fusion processors will improve as AMD discovers new ways to boost the performance of graphics processors and microprocessors, Hester said. One area of improvement for GPUs will be in power consumption. GPUs still use more power than microprocessors, so there is an opportunity for AMD to use the lessons it has learned to reduce power consumption in microprocessors and apply them in GPUs. The importance of graphics in so many devices was a major reason AMD bought ATI Technologies Inc. "The future is consumer electronics and the PC," said Hester, indicating Fusion will be important for AMD in both segments. Handsets are already a major market for ATI graphics. Over 200 million ATI chipsets have already been shipped in handsets, he said. David Orton, the former CEO of ATI and current executive vice president of AMD's visual and media business, said ATI graphics products will continue to challenge Nvidia Corp., which was ATI's biggest rival, for the premium end of the market. Two important areas for the graphics industry today are further improving picture resolution, and 3D (three dimensional) viewing. In picture resolution, the industry is talking about moving to 4 million pixels per frame resolution, twice the number of pixels found in the best high definition television (HD TV) out today. Advances in 3D should lead to images jumping out of the screen within the next few years in games and in graphics intensive work such as mechanical design, Orton said. One problem the industry has been trying to solve for the high-definition video era is making sure that users can watch HD movies on laptops without running out of battery power. Orton said the graphics processor in ATI Radeon HD 2000 graphics cards contains a unified video decoder to decode HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc movie discs, instead of passing the decoding work to the microprocessor. The difference is that a laptop with an ATI Radeon HD 2000 should be able to show an entire HD movie on a single battery. At Computex, Acer Inc., the world's third largest PC maker, showed off an AMD-based laptop PC with ATI's HD 2000 technology inside.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!