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Round up: Market research firms cut 2003 semiconductor forecasts

Gartner Dataquest and other top semiconductor market research firms recently lowered their forecasts for chip market growth this year.

More here at DigiTimes

BFG Technologies First To Fill GeForceFX Pre-Orders

BFG Technologies announced that it has begun shipping the Asylum GeForce FX 5800 Ultra to fulfill the orders of customers who pre-purchased the product from Best Buy between January 15 and February 9, 2003.

BFG Technologies and Best Buy launched the pre-order program both online at www.bestbuy.com and in Best Buy stores around the country. Retail customers who took advantage of the program were treated to a free, limited edition "pre-order box" filled with valuable rebate coupons and BFG Asylum collectibles.

SiS adds VIVO function to Xabre600 through Conexant chipset

Chipset designer Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) on February 17 introduced an advanced graphics solution for its Xabre line. Co-developed with Conexant Systems, the new Xabre600 offers VIVO (video in/video out) function by incorporating Conexant’s Bt835 multimedia chipset.

More here at DigiTimes

256Mbit DDR dips below US$3

DRAM spot prices have tumbled 15% within the past three transaction days, with 256Mbit DDR plunging below US$3 on Monday, reported the Chinese-language Commercial Times, citing DRAMeXchange.

More here at DigiTimes

SiS to scrap 0.13-micron plans

Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) will discontinue all production and development plans at 0.13 microns and below within its own facilities and may begin taking contract-manufacturing orders in the future, confirmed company chairman John Hsuan.

More here at DigiTimes

02:57 EST [David]
Linksys to launch 802.11a/g WLAN products in March

Linksys will begin selling wireless network products supporting the dual 802.11a/g standard in March, joining D-Link in the new WLAN battleground, according to sources.

More here at DigiTimes

03:01 EST [David]
The "Dot-coms" Shall Rise Again, More Sensibly this Time

Several publicly traded dot-com companies have recently reported their first profitable quarters, including Ask Jeeves, Inc., LookSmart Ltd. and MarketWatch.com Inc. Other publicly traded Internet companies that have remained profitable include eBay Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Expedia Inc., Amazon.com Inc., FindWhat.com Inc. and E-Trade Group Inc. Dot-coms Google Inc., DealTime.com, InfoSpace Inc., Netflix Inc. and Overstock.com Inc. are also expected to announce their first profitable quarters this year. "We used to be up against a lot of stupid money that invested in bad ideas," said Larry Kramer, Chief Executive Office of MarketWatch.com. "Now that most of the bad businesses have disappeared, the remaining companies are getting down to doing some real business."

These companies have experienced difficult times to achieve a profit, including sizeable staff reductions and severe budget costs. However, Internet sales are also on the rise with consumers purchasing more products and services over the Internet, and advertisers are again more willing to invest in online advertising. LookSmart reported that its paid search listings increased 16% in 2002 to $96 million, and it estimates that these listing may increase as high as $150 million in 2003. "People are very excited again because we have become a growing company," said Jason Kellerman, LookSmart's chief executive. "There is definitely a feeling that we are in the right space at the right time."

03:00 EST [David]

More Money Is Lost On Xbox, but sales are getting better

Reports circulating around the news services, indicate that Microsoft's losses on Xbox were almost double in the final quarter of 2002. These losses contributed to an overall operating loss of $348 million for Microsoft's home and entertainment division. (Microsoft's home and entertainment division is made up of PC games division and TV products division.) Microsoft is estimated to take about a $100 loss on every Xbox sold, this is not uncommon in the video game hardware arena. Most video game hardware makers are willing to suffer a loss on the hardware in hopes of making up that loss on the software. Xbox did sell well this Christmas season increasing the amount of potential software sales. Xbox did contribute to some light at the end of the tunnel with encouraging sales of the Xbox Live starter kit which was released before Christmas. The release of Xbox Live did increase sales of Xbox Live compatible software titles.

AMD Opteron to Debut April 22

Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. will release its long-awaited Opteron 64-bit processor at an event April 22 in New York City.

The introduction of Opteron will follow the rollout of the Sunnyvale, Calif., company's Athlon XP 3000+ on Feb. 10, the company said on Friday. The Athlon 3200+ will be introduced in the middle of this year, AMD said. Both of those chips are based on the company's Barton core, which will feature a feature a faster 333MHz front-side bus.

Opteron is designed for servers and workstations and will compete with Intel Corp.'s 64-bit Itanium chips as well as its 32-bit Xeons. A key differentiator for AMD is that Opteron is backward compatible in that it can run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications. Because it is a different architecture, Itanium doesn't feature that backward compatibility.

More at eWeek

MSI unveils new SiS746FX-based motherboard

Micro-Star International (MSI) on January 30 launched its new motherboard for the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) platform. Based on the SiS746FX chipset from Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS), the new 746F Ultra motherboard is able to support high-speed DDR400 (PC3200) memory and AGP 8x graphics.

More here at DigiTimes

SAP Takes on Homeland Security

SAP AG is tackling some national security issues with new software. Earlier this week the German software giant launched a technology platform for homeland security process integration. The SAP Security Resource Management platform is geared towards processes in border security, emergency preparedness and response, countermeasures, information analysis and external coordination. The idea behind the software is that government agencies using Security Resource Management will have access to a technology platform that promotes interoperability and process management by integrating "people, processes and technology," officials said.

More At eWEEK

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