Cisco Systems is ready to pick up the pace of mergers and acquisitions over the next year after the valuations of technology companies slumped.

...In the long run, they say, there will be only three viable entities, at least at the leading edge of chipmaking: Samsung in memory chips, Intel in microprocessors and TSMC in foundries. The rest will be "nationalistic" ventures in need of regular government bail-outs.

Its new venture capitalist arm pledged to help find and develop "exceptional start-ups", offering early stage investments to a range of new firms. Areas it will look at include consumer Internet, software, clean tech, bio tech and healthcare. But it will also include "areas we haven't thought of yet."

Microsoft has said it settled a patent dispute over car navigation technology with TomTom NV for an undisclosed amount. Under the terms of the five-year settlement, TomTom will pay the software maker for use of eight patents.

It's no secret that IBM is outsourcing US jobs. Last year, IBM's US employment fell 5%, while emerging market employment rose 15%, particularly in high growth markets like India, China, Brazil and Russia.

China on Tuesday denied suggestions it could be involved in a cyber-espionage ring that attacked computers worldwide from servers mostly based in the country. GhostNet, a network that affected 1,295 computers in more than 100 countries through malware and social engineering, was described in a study last weekend.

Western Digital has announced that it has completed a US$65 million cash acquisition of SiliconSystems, Aliso Viejo, California, a supplier of solid-state drives for the embedded systems market.

So, is Nvidia absolutely wanting to take a look at GlobalFoundries then? Carvill wouldn't say, but noted, "As long as it didn't compromise our relationship with AMD and customer service to them, we would happily have those discussions with Nvidia and anybody else."

Wal-Mart Stores is closing an optical lab in Ohio that employs roughly 650 workers, the world's biggest retailer has said.

The search engine company Google is planning to cut nearly 200 marketing and sales jobs in its second set of lay-offs this year. The cuts represent less than 1% of the 20,200 people employed by Google.