Xilinx Axes 200 Jobs, Goes For Salary Freeze

Xilinx? Xilinx? Xilinx? Xilinx?Xilinx?
Thursday, April 16, 2009: US-based programmable chip maker is cutting its global workforce by up to 200 positions, or 6 per cent, to improve its operating efficiencies. The job cuts, according to the company Xilinx, Inc., will result in a pre-tax charge of approximately $11 to $13 million in the June quarter primarily related to severance pay expenses.
Additionally, Xilinx is implementing other short-term cost savings including executive salary reductions and a broad-based employee salary freeze. As a result, Xilinx expects to generate cost and operating expense savings of approximately $4 to $5 million per quarter beginning in the June quarter.

On 15 April 2009, the terms of employment of all executive officers of the company were amended to reduce their annual base salaries by 10 per cent to 20 per cent, effective 1 May 2009.

From 1 May 2009, Moshe N. Gavrielov, president and chief executive officer, will have his annual salary of $700,000 slashed by 20 per cent to $560,000. The company's senior vice president and chief financial officer, Jon A. Olson's annual base salary of $460,000 would be reduced by 15 per cent to $391,000, effective 1 May 2009.

The foregoing salary adjustments would have no effect on the bonus targets for the company’s executive officers, Xilinx said. The board of directors will also take a 20 per cent cut in their total annual cash compensation.

Over the longer term, the company expects to implement further supply chain efficiencies resulting in additional restructuring charges totalling approximately $10 million over the September, December and March quarters of fiscal 2010. These efficiencies are expected to result in changes to the structure and location of certain global operations, which are expected to provide the company with further cost savings over time.

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Opera Face Gestures Browsing Technology

Opera Software today unveiled its newest innovation to be included in Opera 10 — Face Gestures. Opera Face Gestures enable anyone with a Webcam to control their browser moving only their face. Based on the same architecture as Opera’s Mouse Gestures, Face Gestures makes surfing the Web as easy as smiling, batting an eye lash or flaring a nostril.

Opera Face Gestures grew out of a collaborative project between Opera and the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) to create the world’s most advanced facial recognition technology using only JavaScript, HTML and CSS. After more than seven years in development, Opera Face Gestures were born.

“In 2001, we introduced Mouse Gestures in Opera 5.1. At that point we knew we were on to something,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. “We already had keyboard shortcuts in the very first version of Opera, but once we introduced voice control in Opera 8, we had only one input mechanism left — the face. Opera Face Gestures represent the next frontier in browser control.”

Opera Face Gestures include more than 45 controls, from opening new tabs to restoring sessions to navigating through a Web page. Opera Face Gestures are so advanced you can compose and send an entire e-mail message through Opera’s built-in e-mail client. Even mouse gestures can be triggered with Opera Face Gestures. To activate Opera Face Gestures simply press the single-key shortcut F8.

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iPhone Next Generation The Most Probable Evolution

I drooled at the idea of an iPhone Pro with slide keyboard and big honkin’ camera, but let’s face it: It’s probably never going to happen. So—using logic—what will the next iPhone look like?

Probably something like this: A flatter, even more tapered and slender version of the current one. After all, if you have a winning formula, why radically change it?

Matt says that he would be disappointed if it ends being something like this, just a version of the current model. I’m going to be pessimist and expect just an evolution of the current d

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AMD claims world’s most powerful GPU with the ATI Radeon HD 4890

To meet the ever increasing graphical demands of modern games AMD has introduced the ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card that boasts a staggering 1.36 TeraFLOPs of compute power, GDDR5 memory, and engine clock speeds capable of nearly 1GHz.

The HD 4890 supports DirectX 10.1 for the latest game titles such as Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X., Electronic Art’s BattleForge and SEGA’s Stormrise, as well as GSC Gameworld’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky to deliver improved game and visual performance. The card is also designed to offer tuning potential for overclocking enthusiasts and those looking to get even more performance out of their gaming rigs can combine as many as four ATI Radeon HD 4890 cards in one PC utilizing ATI CrossFireX technology with an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard.

Gamers aren’t the only ones to benefit from the increased power of the HD 4890 with ATI claiming the card can can also help accelerate the conversion of standard and HD video into multiple formats thanks to ATI Stream technology when using ATI Stream-enabled applications such as CyberLink’s video editing software, PowerDirector 7, which provides GPU accelerated video conversion to deliver improved performance and functionality when compared to CPU-only acceleration. The card is also designed to offer improved HD multimedia performance through AMD’s second generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD 2.0) to provide smooth HD video playback with support for HDMI, picture-in-picture and the latest HD audio technologies such as 7.1 surround sound.

The ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card is supported by a dozen add-in-board companies including ASUS, Club 3D, Diamond Multimedia, Force3D, GECUBE, GIGABYTE, HIS (Hightech Information Systems), Jetway, MSI, Palit Multimedia, PowerColor, SAPPHIRE Technology, VisionTek and XFX, offering a variety of custom board and cooling solutions.

The ATI Radeon HD 4890 is available now for USD$249 MSRP, and priced at select etailers as low as USD$229 after mail-in rebate.

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Filmmaker takes a new look at the world through Eyeborg project

After years of wearing a patch to hide his disfigured right eye, damaged as a child in a shooting accident, Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence was forced eventually to replace the eye with a prosthetic one. The camera on Spence’s cell phone, though, gave him a rather novel idea. What if he could build a miniature, wireless video camera into his prosthetic eye? What followed has become the Eyeborg Project, the progress of which can be now followed online.

While Spence had few resources of his own to invest, the sheer inventiveness of the project has attracted backing from many quarters, including corporate circles. Also assisting Spence is engineer Kosta Grammatis and inventor and professor Steve Mann – aka Cyber-Mann – who has worn video-enabled computers since the early 1980s.

While Spence’s project initially drew comparisons with the bionic eye featured in the ‘70s TV show, The Six Million Dollar Man, recent attempts to fit a working LED device into his eye socket, as reported by New Scientist, gives Spence an appearance more like that of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg from Terminator.

Although this development is more of a sideshow to the main event: installing a video camera with which Spence can capture his unique perspective on the world around him – a take that, if all goes according to plan, will be relayed back to a computer.

In recent months, the Eyeborg team is reporting “major headway” and hopes to have a working prototype up and running later this month. Stay tuned.

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AK007 cell phone for Chinese police

We all know that police as well as other authorities often have their own versions of devices and gadgets, presumably allowing them to nab lawbreakers with added efficiency. Apart from rugged laptops, here we are with QiGi Future Technology’s AK007 cell phone. No idea whether the 007 code at the second half of the device name has anything to do with paying homage to the world’s most famous fictional secret agent or not, but it does have a nice ring to it. This handset will be tough as nails to cater to a police’s everyday line of work, featuring a 2.8″ display at 320 x 240 resolution, a 2-megapixel to capture incriminating evidence of a crime in progress, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity to help one while the time away on a nearby Wi-Fi hotspot when on duty, GPS navigation to know where one is headed to if he/she is a rookie in that particular area of the ‘hood and quad-band (850/900/1800/1900MHz) GSM telephony to help keep the police in question connected with the rest of the force.

It seems that China’s Ministry of Public Security has a different taste compared to the masses with their apparent preference for Windows smartphones, since the AK007 will be powered by Windows Mobile 6.1. No idea whether the Chinese government will hold back further details concerning this handset for their police force or not, but it makes us wonder what else goes into the ruggedized case that measures measures 4.44″ x 2.67″ x 0.62″, while tipping the scales at 3.88 ounces. You will also find damage-resistant bumpers around its edges just in case of drops and knocks, and at least the commoner would know better than pick this up on the black market since it comes with the word “police” emblazoned on the front. No idea on how much equipping the entire police force in China with this handset will cost them…

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World’s largest aircraft from 1930: Giant Russian K-7 flying fortress

The Soviet aircraft industry really like building big. We recently reported on the Hotelicopter , a converted Soviet Mil V-12 Heavy Lift Helicopter, which proved to be an April Fools prank. The Russians can still claim the title of world’s largest aircraft, though, with the Antonov AN-225 heavy lift transport, which has a larger wingspan than the Airbus A380. Both of these modern day wonders have still not eclipsed the Hughes H-4 Hercules or “Spruce Goose” for size and we have just unearthed pictures of something the Russians were working on in the 1930s that may have dwarfed even the Spruce Goose.
With a wingspan of 132.5 meters – for reference, a Boeing 747’s is 68.5 m – and 20 propeller engines, this design is based on a 1932 prototype called the Kalinin K-7, which was a Soviet heavy experimental aircraft. The 3D Computer generated model shown is 2.5 times the scale of the original K-7 but retains the same gigantic elliptical wing of extremely thick airfoil, with two triangle section tail booms. The K-7 was designed as a multipurpose civil and military aircraft. Passengers and payload were housed in the wing, with plans to carry up to 128 passengers. Other designs arranged 16 luxury cabins for 64 passengers, much like the Hotelicopter.

The military version of the aircraft was a real “flying fortress”, which emerged 10 years before the American Boeing B-17. It had as many as 12 gunner positions, which included an electric cart running along the tail booms to transport gunners to two tail machine guns. It could carry more than 16 tons of bombs, 112 fully equipped paratroopers or 8.5 tons of parachute drop-able equipment. While no specs are provided for the 2.5-times-larger version, the original K-7 prototype did fly with a take off weight of 38 tonnes, although the aircraft was destroyed when it crashed in 1933, and no further prototypes were built.

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