AMD

The computer, an update to the Jaguar system, is operated in Tennessee by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, part of the DOE's network of research labs. Researchers from academia, government labs, and various industries will be able to use Titan -- believed to be one of the two most powerful machines in the world -- to research things such as climate change and … Read more

The company, which makes processors for PCs and servers, could let go 20 percent to 30 percent of its employees within coming weeks, according to people familiar with the matter, though they added that the number of affected workers might also be lower.

AMD may announce the move -- its second big staff cut in the past year -- as soon as next week. It reports quarterly earnings Thursday. AMD had 11,737 employees as of the end of the second … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices has announced its answer to Intel's tablet chip, just as Windows 8 devices are about to flood the market.

AMD's Z-60 chip is being marketed as a chip for the "performance tablet" segment.

Translation: it's packing high-performance graphics silicon, which boasts 80 Radeon graphics cores, with the graphics processing unit (GPU) rated at a speed of 275MHz (see chart below).

Its two central processing unit (CPU) cores are rated at 1GHz.

The chip can be squeezed into designs as thin as 10mm, AMD said in a statement.

The first tablets based on … Read more

BlueStacks's technology for running Android apps on Windows fuels a new way for people with AMD-powered computers to get Android apps on their Windows PCs, the two companies announced today.

AMD's new AppZone Player brings more than 500,000 Android apps to AMD-powered computers, and works on Windows 7 and Windows 8 now.

"This will unify the Win 8 and mobile ecosystems," wrote BlueStacks CEO Rosen Sharma in an e-mail to CNET explaining team-up. "Just by virtue of the size of the deal, it's started a giant ball rolling that will be difficult to … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices announced the resignation today of Chief Financial Officer Thomas Seifert, sending the company's stock down 8 percent.

Seifert, who had been with the chipmaker for three years, had briefly served as the company's interim chief executive officer last year after the resignation of CEO Dirk Meyer in January 2011. Seifert returned to his position as CFO in August 2011 when AMD named Rory Read, the former president and chief operating officer of the Lenovo Group, as its new CEO.

Other than the standard statement that Seifert was leaving "to pursue other opportunities," AMD … Read more

Lenovo kept its Windows 8 desktop offerings simple during its announcement today, expanding on existing product lines, and introducing no significant new features to its IdeaCentre all-in-ones.

IdeaCentre A520 Consider this unit, pictured above, the smaller, more affordable version of the 27-inch IdeaCentre A720 Lenovo released earlier this year. This model comes in with a 23-inch, 1,920x1,080-pixel display, and the same high-end Intel Core i7 CPUs and other PC components as the big-screen version, but real focus is on the sleek design, the display adjustability, and the 10-point touch interface.

In a review at the beginning of the … Read more

Not too long ago, a budget laptop was, by default, a big, ugly plastic box. It may have gotten the job done in terms of school or office work, but it wasn't going to turn any heads at the coffee shop, or fit comfortably onto an airline tray (with the exception of too-small Netbooks, which had their own list of problems).

We'll look back on 2012 as the first year when budget laptops really got a fair shake, with many models looking and acting much more like their expensive cousins than ever before.

Even at the very low end of budget -- laptops that are $600 or under -- you can get a slick-looking HP Envy Sleekbook, or a powerful Acer Aspire V5.

Here are a handful of recent favorites, from 11-inch ultraportables to 17-inch desktop replacements, each of which costs about half as much as a 13-inch MacBook Air.… Read more

Samsung has spruced up its Series 7 gaming laptop for PC gamers who like some 3D action thrown into the mix.

The 17.3-inch machine has been refreshed with a "SuperBright" 1920x1080 3D LED display, according to Samsung. Fans of 3D movies can also take advantage of the new display courtesy of the unit's Blu-ray drive. And along for the ride is an AMD Radeon HD 7870M graphics card that Samsung says is developed for games and taps into DirectX version 11.1.

The Series 7 Gamer has also gotten a paint job, splashed with a sunny … Read more

Fast on the heels of Apple nabbing a designer from chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, AMD turned around today and hired an Apple chip architect.

Jim Keller, 53, will join AMD as a corporate vice president and chief architect of AMD's microprocessor cores, reporting to Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster, another former Apple employee.

"Keller will lead AMD's microprocessor core design efforts...with a focus on developing both high-performance and low-power processor cores that will be the foundation of AMD's future products," AMD said in a statement.

Keller had been a director in the platform architecture … Read more