Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

The U.S. semiconductor industry, notoriously volatile even without the shock of a global economic downturn, was badly hurt in 2008 as prices for memory chips continued their dizzyingly rapid fall and demand for PC microprocessors dropped off amid weaker demand.

Dresden is one of the great success stories of German reunification. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the capital of the East German state of Saxony remade itself as the center of European semiconductor production, becoming home to major facilities operated by U.S. chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices as well as Munich-based Infineon Technologies. When a 1998 Time magazine article dubbed the region "Silicon Saxony," locals embraced the label and even founded an organization by that name to promote industry interests.

The Khronos Group on Monday announced that its OpenCL 1.0 specification has been ratified and publicly released. Apple proposed the spec six months ago.

OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is the first open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of modern processors found in personal computers, servers and handheld/embedded devices.

Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices is among the most recent casualties of the slowdown in technology spending. On Dec. 4 the chipmaker drastically cut its sales outlook, saying fourth-quarter revenue will drop about 25 percent from the third quarter's $1.59 billion.

Many of the problems facing Advanced Micro Devices Inc. are of its own making. But the limited choices the chip maker has for solving its troubles are symptoms of an affliction sweeping through Silicon Valley.

Slumping sales, big layoffs and devastated stock prices are becoming the norm, resurrecting memories of the malaise that gripped the Valley for years after the dot-com meltdown in 2000.

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.

A former Intel Corp. engineer has been charged with stealing trade secrets worth $1 billion from the chip maker while he worked for its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.