LSI's Deal Fails Logic Test
639793
LSI's deal for Agere was unexpected -- and not greeted warmly.
436386
One of Forest Labs' Alzheimer's drugs fails in Phase III trials.
98860
The hardware networking company is trying to break out of the doldrums.
296823
AMD HAS failed in its most recent attempt to force Intel to disclose documents relating to an antitrust investigation to European Commission investigators.
350528
AMD winning on strained silicon? Maybe not, but either way, money can't buy Intel any love.
319622
A custom chip powered a disputed demonstration of quantum computing by D-Wave Systems.
429440
(InfoWorld) - After a busy two yearsÂ reorganizing LSI, the new leadership of the company, which includes several former Intel executives, is ready to do battle in the competitive markets for storage and networking chips. LSI is one of the first major companies to finish reorganizing amid a broad consolidation in the chip sector caused by rising research and development costs. The rising costs means that size matters: Companies need to make enough money to keep up with higher costs for chip designs and upgrades. Development budgets are rising as the size of transistors and other parts on a chip shrink, said Jeff Richardson, executive vice president of the Network and Storage Products Group at LSI. The size of components on chips, and the spaces between them, has already hit 45-nanometers, a microscopic size thousands of times thinner than a human hair. Without the budgets to continue investing in the machines and research needed to continue the development of chip products, companies will wither. One of the reasonsÂ LSI acquired Agere SystemsÂ late last year is because the networking and storage chips made by the two companies are a much larger, more viable business combined than separate, said Richardson. LSI is already ready to move forward, which is saying a lot since it has continued to buy or sell companies and divisions for the past several months. The last major deal was theÂ sale of its mobile phone products business to Infineon TechnologiesÂ last month for $450 million, a deal that will likely give Infineon the size to compete for third place in the mobile handset chip industry. LSI sold off its consumer products division in July, signed contract manufacturing agreements to allow it to slough off factories and workers, and has bought two chip makers over the past year, including StoreAge Networking Technologies. So far, the company has pared its workforce by over a third to 6,000 people. "We're done with the major moves," said Richardson. He joined LSI two years ago with several colleagues from Intel, including Abhi Talwalkar, LSI's president and chief executive officer. Talwalkar used to be a vice president and co-general manager at Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, which includes storage and communications products. The group set changes in motion at LSI to make it more streamlined in terms of its product portfolio, and more powerful in its main business segments -- networking and storage. "The combination of the companies has already resulted in major design wins," according to Richardson, though he declined to elaborate. LSI and Agere shared a lot of synergies in storage and networks, which is why the deal made sense, he said. In networking, LSI is now focused on providing chips to telecommunications companies for TV services, broadband, and collaboration. Chips are needed for equipment used in advanced packet processing, advanced traffic management, content inspection, and digital signal processing. For the storage business, which includes hard disc drives, there are a host of new products either coming out or under consideration at the company, including chips for solid-state drives, Richardson said. The decision to sell its mobile phone arm wasn't easy, but LSI sees the market as a tough one undergoing consolidation. Two companies dominate in communications chips, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, said Richardson, and there's an ongoing battle for a distant third place. Several major chip makers have opted out of the segment in recent years. For example,Â Intel agreed to sellÂ its communications and application processor business last year to Marvell Technology Group for $600 million. This year has seen a few deals, including the LSI-Infineon transaction and the purchase of Analog Devices' telecommunications chip products by Taiwan's MediaTek for $350 million in cash. "We believe there will be further consolidation," said Richardson. Â
5092
Stock fails HA test too The poor SCO Group can't get much right these days, including keeping its high availability clusters highly available.â¦
382727
Microsoft's security software has failed an independent test to see if it can spot Windows viruses.
534372
Lack of compatibility standards frustrates consumers, panel agrees.
210645
Â· Judge says company fell seriously short of its duty  Â· Firm admits testing procedure badly flawed
545670
The last major chip design that Mooly Eden convinced IntelÂ to adopt was a failure. As he prepared the design in the late 1990s that would become the Pentium M, he knew he couldn't afford to miss a second opportunity.
482486
LSI Logic hopes the deal, valued at $4 billion, will help it compete in the competitive market for data storage.
310675
Like many, I was pretty shocked by the recent Microsoft-EU deal to settle the long-running investigation into interoperability issues.  This was not so much because of the way Microsoft has used every kind of delaying tactic it could before eventually agreeing (for the nth time) to try harder in the future.  My real dismay was provoked by the gap between appearance and reality â a chasm that I think bodes ill for the future of open source. read more
279928
roundup Plus: SGI works on Linux performance software...Good Technology supported by HP, Samsung...RealNetworks loss widens on litigation.
751483
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) today rejected an offer from Deutsche Borse, its bigger German rival, valuing it at about Â£1.35 billion ($2.6 billion), or 530pence per share, a significant premium to Fridayâs closing price of 430 pence.
680186
Five Sequoia electronic voting machines sold at on online auction? $82. A chance for a researcher to dissect the embedded software that the company refused to make public? Priceless. By Kim Zetter.