Shanghai

Advanced Micro Devices told the Securities and Exchange Commission this week that it will be recording a $70 million charge in the year ahead due to its implementation of a new restructuring plan that includes the termination of 600 employees -- 100 more than it had previously envisioned.

Moreover, the chipmaker's financial woes are far from over. Earlier this month, AMD warned investors that it expected a 25 percent fall in revenue for the fourth quarter this year "due to weaker than expected demand across all geographies and businesses, particularly in the consumer market."

Advanced Micro Devices quietly rolled out two new dual-core Athlon chips this week: The X2 7750 Black Edition processor, which clocks at 2.7 GHz and lists for just $79; and the X2 7550 -- a 2.5-GHz processor that appears destined for sale to desktop PC manufacturers at even lower prices.

Both new chips employ the same processor die that AMD uses to manufacture its triple-core Phenom X3 and quad-core Phenom X4 processors, but with only two of the cores activated, noted Matthew Wilkins, a principal analyst at iSuppli.

Requirements that Internet cafés in a southern Chinese city install Chinese-developed operating systems are raising new concerns over cyber snooping by authorities, a U.S. government-funded radio station reported Wednesday.

The new rules that went into effect Nov. 5 are aimed at cracking down on the use of pirated software, said Hu Shenghua, a spokesman for the Culture Bureau in the city of Nanchang.

IBM on Thursday announced two blade servers that will feature the new quad-core Opteron Shanghai processor from Advanced Micro Devices. The announcement was synchronized with AMD's release of the 45nm processor.

Shanghai delivers up to 35 percent more performance with up to a 35 percent decrease in power consumption at idle than previous AMD processors. AMD promises its new Opteron product will drive data-center efficiencies and spur virtualization performance.

Electronic Arts Inc. is turning to online games to boost its limited presence in Asia, the Asia president of the U.S. video game maker said Tuesday.

EA's main business in the West comes from packaged games software for consoles and personal computers, but online games are more popular in Asia, EA President for Asia Jon Niermann told The Associated Press in an interview.

"It's night and day," Niermann.

Niermann was attending the launch of "Need for Speed Undercover," which features a character played by actress Maggie Q.

China is rushing in to build its own network of electric charging stations. Xinhua, the government's official newspaper, announced last week that the State Grid Corporation, the world's largest electric power transmission and distribution company, is speeding up its plans to build electric car charging stations.
The stations will be located in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and other large cities.

China's biggest mobile phone company will take over a smaller fixed-line carrier, a state news agency said Friday, in what was expected to be the start of a sweeping industry restructuring.

China Mobile Communications Corp. will acquire China Railway Communication, also known as Tietong, the Xinhua News Agency said, citing information from state-owned China Mobile.