chip maker

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.

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.

Toshiba, Japan's largest chip maker, reported a quarterly loss on Wednesday after the global economic slowdown aggravated a glut in the market for chips used to store data in consumer electronics.

The net loss was yen26.8 billion, or about $275 million, in the three months that ended Sept. 30, compared with a yen25 billion profit a year earlier, the company said. Sales fell 7 percent to yen1.88 trillion.

Toshiba joins Samsung Electronics and Sony among electronics makers reporting lower earnings this month.

Green is no longer just for hippies. Over the past couple of years, mainstream companies have started to realize that they need to fundamentally rethink their environmental policies, and while some still see the issues in terms of compliance, risk management or marketing, others see business opportunity.

Companies in the latter category have been appointing high-level executives as corporate sustainability officers and giving their managers financial incentives to meet environmental targets.

Green is no longer just for hippies. Over the past couple of years, mainstream companies have started to realize that they need to fundamentally rethink their environmental policies, and while some still see the issues in terms of compliance, risk management or marketing, others see business opportunity.

Companies in the latter category have been appointing high-level executives as corporate sustainability officers and giving their managers financial incentives to meet environmental targets.

Chaos in the money markets gave Microsoft Corp. an opening Monday to announce it would take on debt for the first time, launch a new $40 billion stock buyback plan and raise its dividend.

The moves indicate that for all the credit problems plaguing the financial sector, cash-laden technology companies with good credit ratings are still borrowing money on favorable terms and otherwise enjoying flexibility.

With Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s cash reserves dwindling and the chip maker's overall financial health deteriorating to dangerous levels last year, the company was thrown a lifeline by Lehman Brothers, the investment bank now in bankruptcy.

The $1.5 billion in AMD debt that Lehman scooped up in August 2007 demonstrates the important role that banks like Lehman and other investment firms play in helping prop up wobbly companies by pouring money into them when they're down.

From mainframes to minicomputers and then personal computers, each new computing generation has displaced its predecessor by reaching a broader audience and costing far less. And each time, the dominant company in one generation loses control in the next.

That is why the PC industry's commanding chip maker, Intel, might do well to be alarmed by the computer chips being designed by Qualcomm, a maker of chips for cell phones.

Intel Corp.'s push to create and boost new categories of small, cheap Internet-connected devices is taking the world's largest chip maker in some unusual directions.

It's investing in wireless networks, or even buying them outright. It's relying on software that isn't from Microsoft. And it's looking at making processors cheaper and smaller rather than faster and faster.

To Chief Executive Paul Otellini, it's all part of bringing the Internet to new places and people, and computer makers are responding.