EET-i Top of the News

Week of May 15, 1995

May 18, 1995

Sente seeks higher power

Chips and Technologies focuses on unified memory

Bay Networks to acquire Centillion

Set-top candidates eyed by Tele-TV

Intel LAN strategy ties in with Novell

Windows goes to work: pre-emptive multitasking in '95' opens door
What's new(s) at EE Times-interactive

May 17, 1995

Mentor tool offers critical-path testing

New techniques rewrite pen computing

Sorting algorithm matches constellations for navigation

All-CMOS process ideal for single-chip video use

North Korea seeking electronics investment

Interface battle moves to adapter boards

May 16, 1995

TI cuts 16-bit DSP tag; 40 Mips for under $5

Digital pen recalls what it has written

TCP/IP tools target client, server apps

MIT spinoff creates $100k supercomputer

Vitesse debuts GaAs amp for optical links

Motorola launches full transceiver set for 1.9-GHz PCS

True 12-bit, 50-msample/s A/D converter due

May 15, 1995

Trio packs floppy with 120 Mbytes

National has Cardbus IC in the works

AT&T, Motorola boost stakes in DSP game

Computer-human interface scrutinized at conference

Cable-modems make the scene

Other news sources on Techweb:

• Interactive Age
• Information Week
• Electronic Buyer's News

Sente seeks higher power

By Richard Goering

WESTFORD, Mass. -- An EDA startup located here, Sente Inc., is taking aim at a narrow but strategically vital niche--high-level power analysis for IC design. Sente represents the re-emergence of Lorne Cooper, president and chief executive officer, who served as vice president of engineering at Viewlogic Systems Inc. until his departure last fall.

Sente is preparing a product called WattWatcher for fourth-quarter release. The product will provide register-transfer level (RTL) power analysis for ASICs and ICs. The company's mission is to raise power analysis from the transistor level, where it commonly resides today, to a much higher level of abstraction at the front of the design cycle.

Cooper noted that large EDA companies have spent much of their time and money build ing an infrastructure in which to market products. But with the advent of the Internet, that infrastructure is much more accessible to niche vendors, he said.

"The new breed of EDA company can use the Internet for support and distribution," Cooper said. "It may be the primary way to distribute products." Industry standards also reduce the need to build an infrastructure, he pointed out.

Chips and Technologies focuses on unified memory

By Brian Fuller

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Jim Stafford and his management team at Chips and Technologies have spent more than a year clearing away the rubble at the formerly could-do-no-wrong core logic vendor. What they're starting to rebuild is a formidable, if smaller, silicon vendor focused on its original business--personal computer designs.

The latest focus for Chips is the budding interest in unified memor y, an area to which the company thinks it can bring value through integrated silicon solutions and its recent--if not uncommon--switch from a bottom-up to top-down design methodology.

"We'd gotten away from listening to the customer," said Stafford, a 10-year Chips veteran, who saw the company basically invent the core-logic business only to tumble from its perch in the early 1990s. "We brought great things to market, but often when we got there, there wasn't a customer."

Chips managers are eyeing unified-memory designs--in which the core logic and graphics accelerator share main memory, saving board space and money--for desktop systems shipping by the first quarter of 1996.

Bay Networks to acquire Centillion

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Bay Networks Inc. has bought its way into the switched token-ring world by entering an agreement to acquire Centillion Networks Inc. (Mountain View, Calif. ), a startup mapping switched token-ring frames into Asynchronous Transfer Mode networks.

While Bay had a good position in Ethernet switching through its 28000 product line, neither the SynOptics nor Wellfleet predecessors of Bay had a token-ring switch strategy in place.

Bay has agreed to acquire all Centillion outstanding stock for approximately $140 million worth of Bay common stock. Bay already had agreed early this year to serve as a distributor of Centillion's SpeedSwitch product line.

Centillion will be treated as an independent operating unit of Bay and Centillion president Bobby Johnson will continue to manage the unit. Most of Centillion's founders, including Johnson, vice president of engineering Earl Ferguson and vice president of marketing Selina Lo, had been with Network Equipment Technologies Inc. before forming Centillion in late 1993.

Set-top candidates eyed by Tele-TV

RESTON, Va. -- Tele-TV, the newly christened foray by phone companies into video services, expects to announce the winners of its set-top-box competition in July, an official from one of the three member companies said last week.

Bell Atlantic, Nynex and Pacific Telesis formed the video joint venture last year and released a request for proposals in March for up to 4.5 million set-tops over five years. Ken Van Meter, a Bell Atlantic executive who also is helping lead the RBOC joint venture, said the partners have identified a short list of candidates to submit best and final offers and will be meeting with them over the next six weeks.

Van Meter said the partners will "probably have no more than two" set-top suppliers. Tele-TV, formerly known as NPB Partners, is seeking a converter box with a replaceable network interface module that would allow it to work with different network architectures at a cost of around $300. "The [remaining] proposals were in that range," Van Meter said in an interview.

Intel LAN strategy ties in with Novell

By Loring Wirbel

HILLSBORO, Ore. -- Intel Corp.'s network products division (NPD) is hitting the road this week with the long-awaited Nitro LAN server board, marrying a Fast Ethernet controller with an i960 for packet processing. The company also updated its StorageServer family with a Pentium-based series featuring Fast Ethernet channels and a PCI system bus.

Perhaps as important as the hardware, however, is a commitment from Novell Inc. (Provo, Utah) to promote the concept that server links to hub and to client desktops will require LAN boards with local intelligence, such as an i960 processor.

Chad Taggard, head of Intel's Fast Ethernet product marketing, said that Novell played an active role in writing drivers for the PRO/100 Smart Adapter board. Novell is sending out application notes to its N etWare customers specifying how local intelligence should be used in PCI-based server environments.

Windows goes to work: pre-emptive multitasking in '95' opens door

By Michele Clarke

The addition of pre-emptive multitasking to Windows 95 opens Windows to the mission-critical world of factory control. Though Microsoft Corp. acknowledges that its first stab at preemptive multitasking remains buggy, the arrival of Windows 95 this year will usher in a new era for PC software.

For makers of factory-automation programs in particular, the appearance of pre-emptive multitasking in the base operating system and improved interprocess communication links give Windows its first solid basis for appeal to the control market. But the shift from integrated to component software is changing both the economics of the factory-software segment and the way it s products are developed, marketed and supported.

Heady stuff for a niche that's accustomed to serving super-cautious process- and discrete-control customers. But a tradition of plugging Windows' real-time holes, early experience with Visual Basic and a bead on Microsoft's product plans are combining to help the companies brace for the change.

With the arrival of Windows 95, many proprietary products for factory control can be expected to change or even to disappear. Many of those programs are designed to bypass Microsoft's non-real-time Dynamic Data Exchange facility by providing a faster, more deterministic pathway for data acquisition.

Such programs arose in the first place because users wanted the benefits of earlier versions of Windows but couldn't live within its limitations. "The only way to cover up problems with Windows 3.1 was to write proprietary workarounds," said one official at Keithley's Metrabyte Division (Taunton, Mass.).

Labtech developed a program called Speedway, and similar D DE workarounds were developed by Metrabyte. Even Wonderware (Irvine, Calif.), a mainstay company in the world of programmable logic controllers (PLCs), got into the act, as did Simquest, a maker of PLC-to-PC software.

Mentor tool offers critical-path testing

By Stan Runyon

WILSONVILLE, Ore. -- Adding yet another feather to its test-tool cap, Mentor Graphics has turned its attention to the cutting edge of chip design, where burgeoning densities have made critical paths the center of designers' attention. New Mentor automatic test-pattern-generation (ATPG) capabilities give those designers a way to verify performance along those paths and detect ac, or at-speed, manufacturing defects.

"Our high-end customers tell us that scan-based functional stuck-at faults, no matter how high the coverage, are not sufficient to detect the classes of defec ts cropping up in submicron designs," said Dave Hofer, design-for-testability product manager. "Those defects affect functionality only during high-speed operation of the part."

At present, designers may try to deal with critical paths by running functional vectors at speed. That is, they'll crank up the clock during testing. That calls for more test cycles and might not sufficiently detect the ac defects. Others attempt to deal with the problem by manually generating critical-path test patterns. That method, even if the paths can be well-defined, still could leave coverage in doubt.

A third school of thought, championed by IBM and others, has turned to transitional fault models--slow rise and fall times at certain nodes--to deal with unwanted delays.

New techniques rewrite pen computing

By R. Colin Johnson

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Handwrit ing recognition, once heralded as the technology that would make computers accessible to any literate user, has largely failed to meet the market's expectations. By redefining the concept so that it fits within the reach of established techniques, system integrators are beginning to offer pen-based interfaces that allow users to get serious work done without a keyboard.

"We still firmly believe that neural-based technologies can enable pen input to replace the keyboard, especially for vertical application areas," said Lexicus Corp. president Ronjon Nag, who founded the company in 1992 after learning neural networks from pioneering Stanford University professor David Rumelhart. The technology developed at Lexicus (Palo Alto, Calif.) relies on neural-based learning algorithms.

"We don't need to adapt to each new user's writing style, because we have already trained the neural network to recognize virtually every way that people write English," said Lexicus marketing director Elton Sherwin. The company rea ched that conclusion after observing the inadequacies of the handwriting-style-based training approach.

Sorting algorithm matches constellations for navigation

By Peter Clarke

RYDE, England -- By putting a sorting algorithm on a high-speed silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) chip, a small company on England's Isle of Wight, JPC Technology, plans to develop a simple processing element for character, speech and general pattern recognition. An initial application for the chip will be a low-mass, high-reliability alternative to satellite gyro systems.

Called Starlight, the all-electronic gyro couples the sorting chip to a standard charge-coupled device (CCD) camera for fast matching of star patterns. The company said that in larger arrays, the same architecture could provide the basis for more-sophisticated recognition tasks.

JPC Technology is wor king with semiconductor company ABB Hafo (Jarfalla, Sweden) to produce a chip for the initial application to satellite navigation. Expecting to receive working silicon this week, the part uses 1.25-micron SOS technology with a complexity of about 48k transistors comprising 12k logic gates running at 20 MHz.

All-CMOS process ideal for single-chip video use

By Chappell Brown

HOLMDEL, N.J. -- By building transistors into a photodetector, a new tack in image sensing being pursued at AT&T Bell Laboratories boosts the sensitivity and speed of response at the focal plane of video cameras. Unlike standard charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors currently employed in video cameras, the new approach does not rely on exotic charge-transfer mechanisms to acquire an image. Instead, photogenerated electrons modulate the voltage on a standard field-e ffect gate, making the detection of photons compatible with standard CMOS transistor design. By incorporating additional transistors into the photodetection cell, gain that boosts signal levels is introduced, a factor missing from CCD imaging cells.

North Korea seeking electronics investment

By Jason Massman

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- In a tangible sign that North Korean leaders are serious about upgrading their Soviet-supplied industrial base, government authorities are actively seeking foreign investment--and electronics is a priority.

Since a nuclear agreement was signed more than six months ago with American diplomats, foreign businessmen have trickled through Pyongyang to look for investment opportunities, and most of them have been trooped through electronics plants.

"It was almost like they took me straight from the airport to the big statue of the Great Leader, and then asked if I wanted to go see an electronics plant," said a German venture capitalist who hopes to find opportunities in shipbuilding.

There is an electronics industry in North Korea--a collection of showcase companies designed mostly with Soviet and East German know-how and equipment. The entire industry is under the loose umbrella of the Korea Daesong Economic Group and the direct control of the family of late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.

Interface battle moves to adapter boards

By Terry Costlow

COSTA MESA, Calif. -- The brewing war between parallel and serial interfaces escalated this week when Q-Logic Corp. and IBM Corp.'s Storage Systems Division brought out adapter boards that take opposing tacks in the transition to next-generation links.

Q-Logic 's UltraSCSI board, which combines the 40-Mbyte/second UltraSCSI interface with the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), is aimed at helping engineers wring more performance from the familiar, parallel SCSI link. IBM Storage Systems, (San Jose, Calif.), meanwhile, hopes to speed the transition to serial interfaces with its new Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) adapter board, which also uses PCI but features an 80-Mbyte/s data rate.

Serial links, such as the IBM-developed SSA and the competing Fiber Channel, provide higher speed, simplified cabling and broader functionality. But in taking on SCSI, they're battling an interface with a well-entrenched physical infrastructure and a high level of customer comfort.

TI cuts 16-bit DSP tag; 40 Mips for under $5

By Ashok Bindra

HOUSTON -- Continuing aggressively on a price-cutting path, Texas Instruments Inc. has lowered the price point of high-performance, 16-bit, fixed-poi nt digital signal processors (DSPs) to an unprecedented 40 Mips for less than $5.

Earlier this year, the company smashed the $10 barrier for 32-bit floating-point DSPs. The goal is to move emerging high-volume applications in consumer, telephony, industrial and computers toward DSP chips. The price is right to open many cost-sensitive new markets for fixed-point DSPs, said Will Strauss, president of market-research firm Forward Concepts, based in Tempe, Ariz. Consequently, he expects high-volume applications like modems, hard-disk drives, feature phones and consumer products to move toward this less-expensive platform.

While the device was initially designed for custom applications, TI is now exploiting the capabilities of the T320C2xLP core for high-volume markets. Based on its C2xLP core, Texas Instruments unveiled two 16-bit fixed-point DSP chips at aggressive pricing. The first two spin-offs include TMS320C203 and TMS320C209. While C209 with larger on-chip memory is currently available, C203 is expe cted to be sampled in the fourth quarter, with production slated for early 1996. In fact, estimated high-volume production pricing for the 40-Mips C203 is targted at $4.95 in OEM purchases of 250,000 units. The same device in 100,000 units will carry a pricetag of $5.26, according to TI. The 20-Mips C209 is expected to carry a pricetag of $9 apiece, in volumes of 250,000 units.

Digital pen recalls what it has written

By Michele Clarke

DENVER -- Researchers at Nagoya University and engineers at Yashima Electric Co. Ltd. have codeveloped a digital pen that remembers what it writes for later playback on a Windows-based PC. The Memo Pen was unveiled here earlier this month at the Association of Computing Machinery's Computer-Human Interaction '95 conference.

Designed as an electronic note-taking and symbol-capture device, the Memo Pen employs a n internal charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensor and memory ICs to record images for display via imaging software that runs under Microsoft Windows. The CCD sensor, located close to the pen's tip, captures a series of partial snapshots of the handwriting created using the pen's conventional ink.

The device captures handwriting and stores it at a fixed sampling rate of 10 snapshots/second. Individual samples are then compared to reconstruct an entire image. Stress data recorded by stress sensors in the pen is also used to reconstruct images. The current prototype of the battery-powered, microcontroller-based device can store about 15 minutes of handwriting, said codeveloper Toshio Taguchi.

TCP/IP tools target client, server apps

By Loring Wirbel

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Network TeleSystems Inc. (NTS) is proliferating its TCP Pro suite of TCP /IP stack tools into subsets for server and client applications. New versions include dedicated client versions for Internet access and remote access.

NTS is turning to an OEM sales model for the first time in an effort to attract remote-access communication server suppliers and Internet-access providers to its TCP/IP tool suite. The company has hit the ground running on its Internet client modules, licensing the modules to Digital Telemedia Inc., The Well, EarthLink Network Inc. and NetLink Ltd.

Since being spun out from Ungermann-Bass Inc. in 1993, NTS has focused on providing TCP/IP stacks for Windows environments, using NetBIOS as a native application-programming interface. NTS president John Davidson said his company still must show customers why the NTS solution is better than Microsoft's own TCP/IP suite (to be built into Windows 95) and must prove that other TCP/IP specialists have dissipated their native Windows OS interests by moving too far into application areas.

"We believe we're the onl y ones who truly support VxD [Virtual Drivers] for Windows," Davidson said of NTS.

In addition to full VxD support, the NTS protocol driver for TCP/IP supports multiple LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) layers (including Ethernet, token ring and Fiber Distributed Data Interface), the Windows Name Server (Wins) and the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). Bundled with the suite are such Windows-based applications as the Netscape Web browser, from Netscape Communications; Eudora e-mail, from Qualcomm Corp.; Usenet news readers; and ftp software for client and server.

MIT spinoff creates $100k supercomputer

By Ashok Bindra

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- MIT Lincoln Laboratory spin-off Integrated Computing Engines Inc. has adopted Analog Devices Inc.'s ADSP21060 Sharc DSP to bring supercomputing performance to a desktop machine for under $100,000. ICE, in fact, has integrated 64 ADSP21060s in a parallel-processing architecture MeshSP to deliver 7.7 Gflops from a desktop.

The desktop system combines the density and power conservation of real-time systems, the flexibility and speed of supercomputers and the economy and openness of PCs to create a new class of computers-cum-real-time superstations, said Jonas Lee, ICE's general manager. Lee said the desktop comes with a simple and flexible programming model and an unprecedented development environment.

The company is targeting engineering simulation, graphics, signal processing, imaging and neural networks. ICE is actively pursuing hardware-licensing agreements and software partnerships in selected applications segments.

Beta testing is being conducted now for the desktop system. ICE plans to deliver the first such superstation within a month to AT&T Bell Laboratories, where it will be employed for fiber-optics research.

Vitesse debuts GaAs amp for optical links

CAMARILLO, Calif. -- Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. is sampling a special transimpedance op amp for serial optical applications, which represents the first fruits of a corporate pact with IBM Corp. on joint optoelectronic designs. The VSC7800 series is a high-gain GaAs amp family with an integrated metal-semiconductor/metal-optical-detector operating in a range of 770 nm to 860 nm.

The amps can be used in serial versions of the High Performance Parallel Interface (HiPPI) standard, as well as in Fiber Channel applications at data rates of 266 Mbits/second, 531 Mbits/s and 1.031 Gbits/s.

The first three members of the 7800 family have been designed specifically for Fiber Channel's full-speed, half-speed and quarter-speed rates.

Motorola launches full transceiver set for 1.9-GHz PCS

By Loring Wirbel

PHOENIX -- Motorola Inc. last week introduced two radio-frequency (RF) gallium-arsenide chips for 1.9-GHz personal communication services (PCS) networks. The driver and switch ICs, unveiled at the IEEE MTT-S Microwave Symposium in Orlando, Fla., flesh out a five-chip set that implements all transmit and receive functions for PCS.

The ICs also can be used in Digital European Cordless Telephone (DECT) and Japan Personal Handy System applications.

Integration

The MRFIC1806 integrates a driver amp and ramp circuit; the companion MRFIC1807 is a single-stage power amp and transmit/receive switch. The 1807 can be driven directly by the 1806. Both operate in the 1.5- to 2.2-GHz frequency range.

The 1806 includes a two-stage driver amp along with special waveform-shaping circuitry. The amp portion uses depletion-mode power GaAs MESFETs to produce +21-dBm output with 0-dBm input. The ramp circuit controls burst-mode transmit rise and fall times. It can be adjusted through external discrete components. In TDMA applications, the ramp circuitry also places the amp in standby during TDMA receive. Typical gain is 23 dB.

True 12-bit, 50-msample/s A/D converter due

NORWOOD, Mass. -- Analog Devices Inc. is sampling the AD9042, an A/D converter that was the subject of a special paper at February's International Solid-State Circuits Conference. The true-12-bit, 50-Msample/second A/D consumes 575 mW from a 5-V supply.

The AD9042's low distortion--80-dB spurious-free dynamic range at Nyquist rates--is comparable to that of many 14-bit converters. The process technology is a new one called XFCB (extremely fast complementary bipolar).

Applications include those that need IF sampling and oversampling of wideband signals, such as digital cellular base stations. The converter allows creation of software-downloadable support for TDMA and CDMA access in one system . ADI is preparing application notes to show base station developers how to implement one wideband receiver with A/D that can send signals of different types across a common data bus to multiple DSPs. Sampling is guaranteed to be 41 Msamples/second minimum. Intermodulation distortion is typically 90 dB.

Trio packs floppy with 120 Mbytes

By Terry Costlow and Yoshiko Hara

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- One Japanese and two U.S. companies have teamed up to develop a floppy-disk drive that stores 120 Mbytes and maintains compatibility with the 1.44-Mbyte drives now used industrywide.

The partners--Compaq Computer Corp., 3M Co. and Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics (MKE) Industries Ltd.--are promoting the drive as the next-generation floppy-disk standard. Industry watchers, however, are split on whether it will be a hit or a flop.

The technology, which will be introduced in the fall, could see solid success, since it gives users enough capacity to handle some jobs currently performed by CD-ROMs and tape drives.

"This has reasonable backup capacity, and it's even more valuable for software distribution," said Dal Allan, president of ENDL Consulting (Saratoga, Calif.). "It could do well for software distribution, because it lets you ship a good-sized program on one disk.

"Many software providers wonder if all the world is going to use the CD-ROM, but they know everyone uses floppies. This also has the beauty of being able to say that you can get all this and still have backward compatibility," Allan said.

National has Cardbus IC in the works

By W. David Gardner

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- In a move that could roil a portable-computer market already struggling with issues raised by the new PCMCIA spec, National Semiconductor last week disclosed plans to make a Cardbus controller.

With the goal of seeing Cardbus cards demonstrated at Comdex/Fall in November, National nonetheless stopped short of an actual Cardbus-controller announcement. The company did say that a number of Cardbus controllers will be ready soon and they'll be price-competitive with PC Card controllers adhering to older PCMCIA revs.

The revelation adds turmoil to the market. Systems vendors and card suppliers have been confronting the riddles of the new PC Card 95 spec, which include how to deal with 3.3-V operation or how to handle legacy software that depends on interrupts and direct memory access (DMA).

Cardbus, which combines the PCMCIA form factor with 32-bit, 33-MHz PCI bus electricals and protocols, adds another dimension. Nominally, existing PCMCIA cards will work in a Cardbus slot. But Cardbus is a 3.3-V bus, and, like PCI, lacks provision for DMA or ISA-style interrupts. It also requir es new host adapters.

AT&T, Motorola boost stakes in DSP game

By Ashok Bindra

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The announcements set for this week's DSPX conference here will raise the stakes in two DSP contests. Leading manufacturers of monolithic general-purpose digital signal processors are coaxing more horsepower from their devices at lower current drain. And the newest player on the swelling roster of core vendors is cranking up the Mips while turning down the voltage.

AT&T Microelectronics will tout its fastest 16-bit fixed-point DSP yet. Motorola Inc. will announce a new Mips milestone for its 24-bit offering. And core-startup Infinite Solutions Inc. will unveil a powerful core that offers unparalleled Mips performance at 3.3 V.

AT&T Microelectronics (Allentown, Pa.) combined a 0.5-micron triple-level-metal CMOS process with circuit r edesign to achieve 70-Mips performance at 5 V (50 Mips at 2.7 V) for its 16-bit fixed-point DSP1627. Power consumption was improved 40 percent compared with earlier AT&T devices.

Motorola (Austin, Texas) has boosted the performance of the 24-bit 56002 to 40 Mips at 5 V running an 80-MHz clock. "The demand for raw performance continues to increase as the market develops more sophisticated applications," said Keith Essency, 24/32-bit operations manager for Motorola Microcontroller Technologies Group's DSP Division.

Motorola is sampling the 80-MHz version now in 144-pin thin quad flat packs (TQFPs). Volume production starts next month.

Startup Infinite Solutions has developed a programmable 16-bit fixed-point DSP core, dubbed the Greencore, that delivers 150 Mips at 3.3 V and 250 Mips at 5 V. Those figures give the Greencore a threefold or greater performance edge over the cores now on the market, according to Krishna Yarlagadda, Infinite Solutions' president and chief executive officer.

Computer-human interface scrutinized at conference

By Michele Clarke

DENVER -- The connection between computer technologies and human sensibilities--no longer the realm of psych majors--came in for heavy scrutiny last week by the leading researchers in user-interface design, applied ergonomics and intelligent systems. Gathered at the annual Computer-Human Interface (CHI '95) conference here, they said electronics companies are clamoring for their services as they seek to make computers easier to use through interface advances.

Jim Miller, intelligent-systems program manager for Apple Computer Inc.'s Advanced Technology Group (Cupertino, Calif.), said, "Computer users used to be restricted to the workplace, where employers dictated the tools that were used. But with more money spent late last year on home computers than for business, there's much more pr essure on this field to understand how computers will be used." Miller is also the current Special Interest Group CHI chairman.

"We've got to understand that there's a human being at the end of every node," concurred Scott Robertson, a researcher at U S West and formerly with IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center "We have to figure out how computers will be used at work in homes and in the context of everyday lives."

Ian McClelland, manager of applied ergonomics at Philips's Corporate Design Center (Eindhoven, the Netherlands), added that those nodes will increasingly include things people don't recognize as computers, products such as telephones and cable set-top boxes.

The consumer shift also has an impact on R&D spending, contends Robertson. "Computing is no longer the most complex part of product development," he said.

Cable-modems make the scene

By Junko Yoshida and Loring Wirbel

DALLAS -- Sniffing new-subscriber potential in the emerging PC desktop-connectivity approach known as the cable modem, such leading cable operators as TCI, Comcast Cable and Viacom came to last week's National Cable Television Association (NCTA) conference eager to promote their cable-modem partnership plans.

But cable operators--as well as the set-top-converter OEMs that created the cable modem to leverage the interest in wideband Internet access--are finding that tailoring a traditional, one-way cable network to a two-way infrastructure for asymmetric data traffic isn't as easy as it first appeared.

First-generation subscriber equipment for hybrid fiber/coaxial networks seems to be standardizing on 64-constellation quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) receivers, combined with quadrature phase-shift keyed (QPSK) transmitters. But developers with initial prototypes, including Motorola, Codex, Hewlett-Packard Co. an d an Intel Corp./Hybrid Networks Inc. alliance, are discovering that a standard subscriber platform only solves part of the problem.

Head-end equipment must be upgraded to handle IP packet data. Hybrid Networks even argues that cable operators must turn to asymmetric router platforms to mix wideband, forward-channel services with narrowband, return-path data.

Developers also have some tough work ahead of them in the IEEE's 802.14 working group to agree on a medium access control (MAC) structure for data over cable.

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