Ben Ames

Sun Microsystems Inc. has taken another step to leverage open-source design so that developers can create more servers based on its Sparc chip architecture. As expected, the company last month released the source code for its UltraSparc T1 processor.

As the chip market moves from making denser, hotter processors to combining multiple cores, Azul Systems Inc. has announced plans to leapfrog its competitors by releasing a 48-core chip by 2007.

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) plans to release business notebook PCs later this year with integrated global broadband wireless connectivity, the company said. HP will team with Cingular Wireless, of Atlanta, Georgia, to add integrated UMTS/HSDPA technology to certain notebooks. The move will simplify wireless networking for overseas travellers.

Mobile phones built in 2007 could store twice as many photos as they do now with a super-dense NOR flash memory chip from Intel Corp. Intel, of Santa Clara, California, will achieve the gain by producing the chip on a tiny, 65-nanometer scale. Compared to standard 90-nanometer flash geometry, this allows designers to store 1G bit of data on a single layer, instead of stacking two chips.

In response to market pressures in its desktop business, Lenovo Group Ltd. Thursday announced it would lay off 1,000 employees and move its corporate headquarters from Purchase, New York, to Raleigh, North Carolina.

In an effort to grab a bigger slice of the U.S. small-business market, Lenovo Group Ltd. is launching a line of low-cost desktops and laptops. The company debuted the Lenovo 3000 product line, the first Lenovo-branded desktops and notebooks to be offered worldwide, and the first to offer a choice of Intel Corp. or Advanced Micro Devices Inc. chips.