As tech giants IBM, Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft report earnings this week, analysts say they expect headwinds and will look for how the companies plan to grow when the economy recovers.

The group also has developed a 32nm process and says customers will be able to move to the more power-efficient 28nm technology without a major redesign. Among the members of the joint development alliance is GlobalFoundries, a manufacturing company formed by AMD and Advanced Technology Investment.

Chief executives from 28 large corporations, including Google, Cisco, Research in Motion (RIM) and Intel, sent President Barack Obama a letter on Mar. 25, urging him to support the Patent Reform Act of 2009. The problem, they say: Litigation costs and patent infringement damages are stifling innovation.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini says the company's much talked about GPU project, Larrabee is on track and volume shipments are to start early next year.

It wasn't long ago that Silicon Valley's tech industry, whose operations and customers span the planet, was confident its global reach would help it escape the worst of the deep American recession. But that hasn't happened. Instead, the valley's top companies collectively are suffering the biggest slump since the dot-com bust.

Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse emailed an Intel executive to try and smooth over tensions following comments a Nokia executive made last week at an event in San Francisco. Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's head of sales and manufacturing, reportedly compared WiMAX to Betamax, the video format that met its demise when VHS triumphed in the 1970s and 1980s.

...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.