Business Tech

Another AMD engineer goes to Apple

The latest AMD chip engineer to pop up at Apple is a graphics and system-on-a-chip expert.

John Bruno is now a system architect at Apple, as of July.

Over the last decade or so at AMD, he has held positions such as senior ASIC design manager and, most recently, system architect.

He started as an ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) designer at ATI in 1996. That company was later acquired by AMD.

His AMD job description on LinkedIn states that he "completed hardware specification for the APU (CPU + GPU SoC) including cost, target die size, power budget and low-power … Read more

Linux comes to ultrabooks: Dell to preload OS on XPS 13

Dell will sell its sleekest ultrabook with a version of Ubuntu Linux this fall.

The Dell XPS 13 ultrabook will be offered with Ubuntu 12.04LTS preloaded in select geographies, the company said in a statement.

The initiative is an extension of Project Sputnik, a pilot project aimed at creating an Ubuntu-based developer laptop.

Dell is taking the project "from pilot to product this fall" and allowing developers "to create 'microclouds' on their laptops...and then deploy that environment seamlessly to the cloud." … Read more

AMD has scary things to say about the PC market

Advanced Micro Devices, the world's second largest PC processor supplier, had some sobering things to say today about the PC market when the company reported earnings today.

"For the first time since 2001, client PC shipments have declined sequentially for three consecutive quarters-and have been below historical averages for the last seven quarters," AMD CEO Rory Read said during the chip supplier's second quarter earnings conference call.

"We also believe the PC industry may be resetting to a new [lower] baseline," he said.

Revenue declined 10 percent to $1.41 billion for the the … Read more

Amazon aims new rentable servers at app developers

In an effort to attract app developers to its cloud storage, Amazon has introduced SSD-backed rentable servers through Amazon Web Services.

Launched Wednesday, the High I/O Quadruple Extra Large EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) includes 2TB of local SSD-backed storage running on eight virtual cores, 60.5GB of RAM, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. The new rentable EC2 instances will be an "exceptionally good" host for NoSQL databases such as Cassandra and MongoDB, Amazon Web services said in a blog post.

"Modern web and mobile applications are often highly I/O dependent," Jeff Barr, a senior … Read more

MemShrink targets add-ons in Firefox beta

A plethora of changes land in Firefox for Android 15 beta, as its desktop counterpart moves its memory management improvements up a notch.

Firefox 15 beta for Windows (download), Mac (download), and Linux (download), brings the memory management improvements developed in Mozilla's MemShrink project one step closer to the stable version of the browser, this time focusing on long browser sessions and how add-ons affect Firefox. Nicholas Nethercote, a developer at Mozilla, wrote on his blog that Firefox 15 beta is likely to be "drastically" faster than Firefox 14, in some cases.

The changes in the beta … Read more

Google earns $2.79 billion in Q2, stock bumps up after hours

Following the closure of the Motorola Mobility deal, Google did pretty well for the second quarter of 2012.

The Internet giant reported second quarter earnings of $2.79 billion, or $8.42 a share, on revenue of $9.61 billion excluding traffic acquisition costs. Non-GAAP earnings came in at $10.12 a share (statement).

Including traffic acquisition costs Google revenue for the quarter was $12.21 billion. TAC totaled $2.60 billion.

Wall Street was looking for second quarter earnings of $10.04 a share on revenue of $8.41 billion, excluding traffic acquisition costs.

Google shares … Read more

Microsoft hires former Clinton adviser Penn as corporate VP

Microsoft has hired a new vice president with strong ties to Washington and public relations.

Mark Penn will join the company as corporate vice president for strategic and special projects. Leading a small team focused on "key consumer initiatives," Penn will report directly to CEO Steve Ballmer.

Microsoft will rely on its new hire's experience in "strategic development, branding, and positioning" to come up with "breakthrough" ideas designed to meet consumers' changing needs, the company said today.

Dubbed "one of the best-known political and campaign strategists in Washington" according to The … Read more

iPad still a destination for fun and games, study finds

Apple's iPad can do an awful lot. But most iPad owners would prefer to stick to Web surfing and entertainment, according to a new study.

Research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners today released the results of a study it conducted of more than 1,000 iPad buyers between December 2011 and April 2012. CIRP asked those recent buyers what they're most likely to do with their slate and found that 40 percent of respondents indicated they surf the Web on the iPad, leading all possible activities.

Watching video, looking at photos, or listening to music, lumped together as &… Read more

Marissa Mayer hinted at what she'll do at Yahoo -- in 2010

Yahoo's new CEO Marissa Mayer might have tipped her hand back in 2010 on what she has planned for her new employer.

At that time, Mayer, then a Google executive, sat down for an interview with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. During that interview, Arrington asked her what she would do if she were running Yahoo. Her first response? It would be a "difficult job."

From there, Mayer dug into Yahoo's decisions at the time, saying that then-CEO Carol Bartz's idea to ink a search deal with Microsoft "was smart in many ways," though … Read more

Nokia promises 'something amazing' on Sept. 7

Photos snapped outside Nokia's currently-closed Helsinki store proclaim that "something amazing" will happen on Sept. 7. The message seems to indicate that the store itself will reopen for business on that date. But the implication is that Nokia will unveil something much bigger.

Other images posted by blogging site My Nokia Blog tell customers to "prepare to be amazed at all the new things in your Nokia store." The company is also inviting people to visit the Web site NokiaGraffiti.me next week to discover more. The site is currently unavailable.

The timing of this … Read more