AMD chose the new HP ProLiant BL465c servers over competitive offerings for their industry-leading performance, power and cooling efficiencies and system management capabilities.

"HP's Linux-based BladeSystem solution's integrated consoles and power control help us to manage more servers without increasing our staff," said Mike Lowe, director, Chipset Engineering, AMD.

"These new systems help AMD take advantage of the latest HP and AMD high-performance and power-saving technologies and dramatically increase the density of our world-class engineering design compute cluster to enable us to bring new generations of chip designs to market efficiently and cost-effectively."

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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) expects its price war with arch-rival Intel Corp. (INTC) to cool next year, according to the Financial Times Deutschland, quoting AMD Chief Executive Hector Ruiz. "We could see a more stable environment," he said.

The newspaper said the price war left its mark in AMD's falling gross margins. He declined to predict exact numbers. But Ruiz insisted his company would defy expectations for a weak position. "We will remain strong," he told the newspaper.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel is initially targeting communications between components inside computers and within computers in data centers with the new chips, The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition. 

The speediest such connections now send about eight gigabits to 10 gigabits of data per second over distances of as much as 18 inches, The Journal said, citing Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's photonics technology lab.

With the new technology, speeds of 20 gigabits to 40 gigabits could become commonplace, over distances of tens of feet, The Journal said it was told by Paniccia.

As a result, computer performance could increase sharply and hardware designs could change significantly; memory chips, for example, would no longer have to be kept close to microprocessor chips to reduce delays in fetching data, The Journal reported.

Commercializing the technology could take at least five years, Paniccia told The Journal.

The company's initial test lasers stopped working at temperatures above about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but researchers believe they have identified ways to reduce the sensitivity to heat, said John Bowers, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Barbara involved in the effort, according to The Journal story.

Ultimately, dozens or hundreds of lasers could be integrated onto a single chip, The Journal said, adding that where comparable lasers now cost from $50 to hundreds of dollars each, the research team thinks prices as low as a dollar per laser are achievable, a change that could transform the field known as photonics.

Lasers are important elements in modern communications hardware, sending data in pulses of light that flow over strands of glass fiber, The Journal said.

But fiber-optic networks are expensive compared with copper wiring and have tended to be limited to long-distance, high-volume applications, The Journal explained.

Scientists have been racing to use silicon, the inexpensive material used in standard computer chips, the Journal said. Up to now, they have mainly succeeded in creating the parts of lasers that guide and amplify light beams, according to the report, and have had to rely on external components to generate light, because silicon doesn't emit light efficiently.

The Intel and UCSB researchers added the missing light-generating capability by finding a way to glue a layer of indium phosphide, a material used in conventional lasers, to a silicon wafer, The Journal explained. The added material allowed them to fabricate tiny devices that generate light when electrical voltage is applied, according to the report.

"This hybrid approach addresses the last major hurdle," The Journal reported Paniccia as saying. "We now have all the building blocks."

Advanced Micro made an aggressive move in July when it announced its plans to acquire graphics chipmaker ATI Technologies. The deal will give Advanced Micro (symbol AMD) the capability to design its own chipsets, something Intel has been doing for years. Also in July, Dell -- a former Intel-only customer -- announced plans to use AMD's chips in its lineup of high-end servers.

Advanced Micro will continue to capture business from Intel, and that represents a long-term opportunity for investors, says Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Eric Gomberg. "We believe that AMD has built up solid momentum over the past couple of years, enough to continue growing its market share in the face of highly competitive products from Intel," Gomberg wrote on Tuesday.

He upgraded Advanced Micro shares from "peer perform" to "outperform." He also raised his 2007 earnings estimate to $1.52 per share from $1.45 per share. At $26, shares of the Sunnyvale, Cal., company are trading at 24 times the $1.09 per share that Gomberg expects the company to earn in 2006, and 17 times his new 2007 estimate.

Advanced Micro and Intel are locked in a vicious price war that has hurt results of both companies. Consider AMD's second-quarter results, released in late July: Profits fell to $89 million from $185 million in the first quarter, and sales dropped to $1.2 billion from $1.3 billion.

The stocks of both Advanced Micro and Intel are down about 20% so far this year. But over the past two years, AMD has eaten Intel's lunch. AMD shares have more then doubled, while Intel's have fallen slightly. Intel (INTC) closed at $20 on Tuesday, as investors awaited the company's announcement of sweeping job cuts. Advanced Micro's stock closed at $26, after the analyst upgrade helped send its stock up more than 6%.

"The quarter is essentially progressing in line with what we had anticipated earlier, and therefore we are reiterating the guidance we originally provided in July," said George Thomas, senior vice president & CFO of Chartered.

Chartered plans to release third quarter 2006 results on Friday, October 20, 2006, Singapore time, before the Singapore market opens. Chartered's original guidance for third quarter 2006 was published in the Company's second quarter 2006 earnings release dated July 21, 2006, which can be found on Chartered's Web site at www.charteredsemi.com, under Investor Relations, Earnings Releases section.