Nevertheless, Nvidia shares rose along with the markets Friday, jumping $0.15 to $14.60 in late-morning trading.

Meanwhile, soft corporate spending affected Cisco profit, which nevertheless managed to beat analysts forecasts as the company's new focus on streamlining operations appears to be paying off. Last quarter, Cisco said it would cut 16 percent of its workforce and reduce costs by $1 billion.

Cisco, considered an IT bellwether because its networking products are central to corporate IS operations, , or $0.43 per share, for the three months ended Oct. 29. This was a decline from its year-earlier profit of $2.4 billion, or $0.42 per share. But revenue rose 4.7 percent year-over-year to $11.3 billion.

The results beat the forecasts of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters, who were looking for earnings of $0.39 a share and on sales revenue of $11.03 billion

Cisco offered guidance for the current quarter that, on the upper end, is greater than what market watchers have been expecting. The company forecast profit of $0.42 to $0.44 per share on revenue of $11.13 billion to $11.23 billion. Analysts on average expected $0.42 per share on revenue of $11.14 billion.