Tech briefs for January 7, 2002

Monday, Jan. 7, 2002 | 9:58 a.m.

Telecommunications giant cutting 5,000 jobs

NEW YORK -- In a continued attempt to reduce its costs, AT&T announced Friday that it planned to lay off 5,000 employees this year.

The company said it would take a charge of about $1 billion, before taxes, in the fourth quarter of 2001 to cover the costs of these layoffs and the costs of having already laid off 5,100 employees.

The majority of the layoffs affect employees who work in management, a spokeswoman said.

AT&T, whose aim to become a communications giant with interests in cable television, wireless communications and the telephone business unraveled in recent years, is now struggling to cut costs as it faces a more modest future. The company announced the sale of its cable business to Comcast Corp. last month and has significantly scaled back its ambitions.

But, in a fiercely competitive environment, the revenue of the company's core business has also fallen, largely because of weakness in the long-distance area. Overall revenue was down about 8 percent for the third quarter of 2001, and Chairman C. Michael Armstrong has outlined some steps the company needs to take in a difficult environment.

Faster processors launched

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. today launched the fastest models yet of their flagship processors, the electronic brains of personal computers.

Intel's new top Pentium 4 chips run at 2.2 gigahertz or 2.2 billion cycles per second. AMD's latest, the Athlon XP 2000+, clocks in at 1.67 GHz.

Despite the speed difference, AMD has claimed its Athlons have more efficient architectures and perform better than faster Intel chips running the most popular applications.

Intel's new chips are the first to be built using a new process that allows smaller transistors and other features, doubled on-board memory and a 30 percent reduction in overall processor size.