AMD boosts transistor speed

Advanced Micro Devices has developed two sets of transistors using different approaches that produce higher levels of performance than conventional transistors, the company said at the VLSI Symposia in Kyoto, Japan, on Thursday.

PC World reports that the company demonstrated how it could combine the use of nickel silicide metal gates with strained silicon transistors and the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology used to develop AMD`s latest eighth-generation Opteron processor to increase performance.

The two approaches improve the performance of the new transistors by as much as 30 percent over older transistors, said Craig Sander, AMD`s vice president of technical development.

Another 10% of 3Com`s workforce will be let go over the next two quarters - part of what has become a restructuring tradition at the company, opines The Register.

US workers will be hardest hit by the cuts. Staff in EMEA will be affected as well, 3Com said in a statement issued on Thursday. The company currently employs close to 3 900 workers.

The US Federal Trade Commission is asking Congress for a bigger stick to fight spam. Among other new powers, the FTC wants permission to cooperate with other countries` law enforcement agencies to hunt spammers anywhere on the planet, reports TechWeb.

In testimony this week before two Congressional committees - the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee - FTC commissioners urged lawmakers to grant the agency sweeping powers to stem spam by extending current telemarketing regulations to e-mail, loosening disclosure requirements, and removing protections that ISPs give customers who are spamming.

"Spam has become the weapon of choice for those engaged in fraud and deception," said FTC Commissioner Orson Swindle, who spoke at both hearings. "Spam is about to kill the `killer app` of the Internet."