■ SEMICONDUCTORS
Intel creates 2bn-chip
Intel said it has created a 2 billion-transistor chip that will give supercomputers "a leap in performance and capabilities." On Monday, Intel said the new Itanium brand chip, codenamed "Tukwila," increases the power of machines more than twofold and will be available near the end of the year. The "quad core" chip is designed with four processors that share computing workloads, Intel said. "The quad-core chip is coupled with higher bandwidths and large caches to enable a doubling in performance of Tukwila over the current Intel Itanium 9100 series processor," Intel said.
■ BANKING
US probing SocGen trades
US prosecutors are probing 4.82 billion euros (US$7.09 billion) in trading losses at Societe Generale (SocGen), the French bank said yesterday. The bank's New York branch was contacted on Jan. 25 by the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, SocGen spokeswoman Laura Schalk said. The New York probe comes as the US Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly opened an investigation into stock sales by US investor Robert Day, a SocGen board member, in the days before the losses were made public. Day and his family's trusts and foundations sold 140 million euros worth of shares last month.
■ MINING
Beijing not involved in buy
The move by the state-owned Aluminum Corp of China (Chinalco, 中國鋁業) to take a stake in Anglo-Australian mining group Rio Tinto was an independent decision, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎) said yesterday. Chinalco, acting with US-based Alcoa Inc, bought 12 percent of the London-listed shares of the world's third-biggest miner for US$14 billion in a sharemarket raid on Friday. "This is an independent decision by the two companies," Yang told a news conference in Canberra, Australia. "They did it, I guess, for their companies' own good."
■ INTERNET
MySpace has new features
MySpace users will be able to add games, e-mail services and other features from outside developers without ever leaving the site under a new program to be fully launched next month. Under the MySpace Developer Platform, an outside e-mail provider can write a program that sits on the personal home page users see when they log on. Users can check for new messages right there. MySpace said developers would be able to write and test interactive programs on up to five users for a month before making them available to the broader MySpace community.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Tata sees Jaguar deal soon
India's top vehicle maker Tata Motors says it hopes to clinch a deal to buy the Jaguar and Land Rover car brands from ailing US carmaker Ford "in the forthcoming weeks." Tata denied British media reports that it had held talks about Fiat's participation in the deal.
■ ENERGY
Solaria, E-Ton sign deal
Solaria Energia y Medio Ambiente SA, the Spanish solar-panel maker that sold shares last year, signed an agreement with E-ton Solar Tech Co (益通光能) for supply of photovoltaic cells. The Tainan-based company will provide Solaria with 40 megawatts-worth of cells, about a third of the Spanish company's needs for this year, Solaria said yesterday in a regulatory filing. E-ton Solar may report a 5 percent decline in its sales last month from December as polysilicon supply from M.Setek has yet to arrive, the DigiTimes reported yesterday, citing industry sources.
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