IBM announces new Power7 processor

In today's podcast: IBM announces new Power7 processor; PayPal suspends payments in India; and Google reduces Nexus One termination fee.

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IBM on Monday launched its latest Power7 processor, which adds more cores and improved multithreading capabilities to boost the performance of servers requiring high up time. The Power7 chip has up to eight cores, with each core able to run four threads, IBM said. A Power7 chip can run 32 tasks simultaneously, which is quadruple the number on the older Power6 chip. The Power7 will also run up to eight times more threads than Power6 cores. Power7 chips will run between 3.0GHz and 4.14GHz and will come with four, six or eight cores.

PayPal, an eBay company, has suspended personal payments to and from India and transfers to local banks in the country. Customers can still make commercial payments to India, but merchants cannot withdraw funds in rupees at local Indian banks. The services have been suspended while the company works with its "business partners and other stakeholders to address questions they have about the service," according to PayPal's blog. PayPal did not say what questions have been raised.

Google has quietly chopped US$200 off its early termination fee on the Nexus One, meaning it will now cost users less to cancel service on the smartphone. Customers who cancel the service had been paying $550, including a $350 Google cancellation charge. That fee has been reduced to $150, but users are still subject to an additional $200 early termination fee from T-Mobile. That means that, in total, they’ll have to pay a total of $350 for cancelling service within 120 days. Users have a 14-day grace period during which they do not have to pay either charge, although they may be hit with a restocking fee.

Google plans to tweak Gmail to make it easier for its users to post and share status updates, in an attempt to inject the Web mail service with social-networking capabilities popularized by Twitter and Facebook, according to The Wall Street Journal. The announcement could come as early as this week, the Journal reported on Monday, quoting anonymous sources familiar with the plans. Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the Journal's article.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.