March 10, 2009
AMD’s new dawn: ‘Tickled pink’ about GlobalFoundries deal; Challenges remain
ZD Net
Larry Dignan writes just how much AMD’s last week deal with Advanced Technology Investment Co. and Mubadala Development to create GlobalFoundries has helped the chip-maker.
“The closure of the deal had a little hiccup, but now the deal is done AMD has more focus, less debt and $825 million in new cash. In many respects, AMD gets a do-over. AMD still owns 34.2 per cent of the Foundry Co. so it’s not like it is completely out of the manufacturing business. But AMD does rid itself of those capital intensive businesses that could have nuked the company.”
IBM not worried about Cisco blades
The Register
Timothy Prickett Morgan writes about vendors and the blade server market.
“ If there’s one thing IBM doesn’t need right now, it’s another competitor jumping into the blade server market. Too bad. Networking giant Cisco Systems wants a bigger bite of the data center budget at exactly the same time that Hewlett-Packard has been ramping up its blade sales and Dell and Sun Microsystems are getting some traction, too. Despite the rumours that IBM and HP are pretty annoyed by Cisco moving in on the server racket, Cisco wants to grow and has little choice but to expand into new markets.”
Apple touch-screen netbook inQ3?
Engadget
Thomas Ricker follows up on a recent rumour put forth by the “Commercial Times / DigiTimes,” about Apple possibly releasing a netbook in Q3.
“Apparently, Wintek will supply the touch-panels to Quanta computer who’ll be tasked with assembling Apple’s netbook. Take this one with a grain of salt though — while these two Taiwan-based magazines (“Commercial Times / DigTimes”) tend to be accurate with insider info related to Taiwan-based companies like Acer and ASUS, they can often be wide of the mark with rumours related to foreign companies.”