Global chip sales up 28%

Global chip sales surged 28% in December, capping a record second half growth rate, reports Financial Times. The site warns that "extremely low chip stockpiles" could signal problems ahead.

It quotes the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) as saying December sales reached $16.03 billion. For the year, global chip sales were up 18% to $166.4 billion.

Oracle is set to cut the prices of some of its new database offerings, reports CRN.

The report says Oracle will drop the per CPU price of the 10g Standard Edition One release by $1 000 to $4 995 and it will enable customers to run that database version on two processors. The current Oracle 9i Standard Edition One is limited for use on one-processor servers.

Oracle is also considering a move to include limited real-application cluster (RAC) support, for up to two nodes, in Oracle 10g Standard Edition, which is expected to retain its list price of $15 000 per processor. The RAC option currently costs $20 000 per CPU for all the database versions.

The Linux version of the 10g database is expected to ship this week, to be followed by the Windows version.

CRN says both moves are big news for a company fighting a fierce database battle against IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server.

A coalition of technology companies and non-profit groups has launched a national campaign in the US to encourage builders of low-income housing to include broadband Internet connections in new building projects.

PC World reports that the coalition has announced a two-year Bring IT Home campaign, which encourages broadband access by putting incentives into the national Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) programme, which helps fund $6 billion worth of low-income housing each year.

Bring IT Home is encouraging states to require high-speed Internet connections in LIHTC housing, and to include the cost of broadband in the subsidised-housing budgets. The coalition estimates that 12 million people living in government-funded housing can`t get broadband Internet service, which it says is necessary for low-income families to take full advantage of the Internet and access resources such as government, educational and job-seeking services.