SiliconBeat

Silicon Laboratories, the Austin maker of analog mixed-signal integrated circuits that counts local companies such as Atmel, Maxim and Cypress among its rivals, today increased its guidance for its fiscal 2009 second quarter. It now expects sales to be up 20 to 25 percent from the quarter before to a range between $101-105 million. It had previously forecast sales in the range of $92-97 million.

The company said that “visibility has Read the rest of this entry »

Integrated Silicon Solution, the fabless San Jose chip company that designs devices used in digital consumer electronics, networking, mobile communications, and automobiles, reported a 46 percent drop in sales for its fiscal 2009 second quarter Tuesday, saying that demand weakened some more in all of its markets during the March quarter.

“However, we believe demand has now Read the rest of this entry »

Rambus is set to get about $349 million from Hynix Semiconductor based on a “final judgement” rendered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Tuesday.

Hynix was also ordered to pay the Los Altos chip designer royalties on Read the rest of this entry »

Marvell Technology said Thursday it’s board has OK’d a plan to get rid of about 850 employees, or 15 percent of the company’s employees, in a move to lower costs “in response to the deteriorating economic environment.”

The job cuts were announced the same day the chip company, based in Bermuda with operations in Santa Clara, released financial results for its 2008 fourth quarter that showed a Read the rest of this entry »

Advanced Micro Devices adjourned a special meeting of its stockholders intended to let them vote on its plan to spin-off its manufacturing plants into a separate entity as part of an investment from the Abu Dhabi government.

The vote was to take place this morning at the Hilton Austin Airport in Texas because the company didn’t have enough  Read the rest of this entry »

  This pink-slip project has gotten very emotional very quickly.

 A day after we launched the Pink Slip 2.0 channel, I’m talking this morning with Kelly Robertson, an executive with a young open-source IT firm based in San Mateo, now watching the global recession  unfold up close and personal. 

   ”I’ll be laid off in ten minutes,” he just told me. “We were
out for a round of funding and it didn’t come through so we had to dig deep and cut deep into our executive staff. We fell onto our own swords to let the company survive.” Read the rest of this entry »

Zilog of San Jose is the latest chip maker to announce job cuts and salary reductions, along with a 23 percent drop in sales for its fiscal 2009 third quarter compared with the year-before quarter and a more than doubling of its net loss.

“The rapid contraction in the global economy and the clouded outlook for demand has caused us to take significant cost reduction actions that included a 35 percent reduction in our worldwide headcount and a 10 percent salary reduction for all of our North America employees along with executive staff.” said Darin Billerbeck, Zilog’s president and chief executive officer.

In August, the company reached a temporary truce with Bryant Riley, its largest shareholder,  who wanted to nominate his own director to the board and sought changes to the company’s by-laws.

LSI reorganized its semiconductor business, consolidating both its storage and its networking chips businesses ino one “semiconductor solutions” group reporting to Jeffrey Richardson, who was made an executive vice president and general manager. Philip Brace, who used to head up Read the rest of this entry »

Intel said Wednesday it would restructure its manufacturing operations, halting production at five older factories. The company will also close two existing assembly test facilities in Malaysia and the Phillipines.

The chip maker said it expects the restructuring will affect between 5,000 and 6,000 employees, although not all would necessarily lose their jobs as the company siad some would be offered positions at other facilities.

The move comes on top of rumors that Intel may post its first quarterly net loss in 22 years when it releases results in April for its current quarter.

Intel said that it is uncertain whether or not it will be able to report a profit for its current quarter, according to a memo its chief executive, Paul Otellini, sent to the chip makers employees last week, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News Read the rest of this entry »