EET-i Top of the News
Week of August 21, 1995
- August 24, 1995
 V-chip solutions beginning to emerge
- OTA pushes Congress to resolve cryptography issue
- Taiwanese bemoan slow arrival of P6
- ASIC sign-off gets extension
- PEP board hosts AutoBahn, Profibus
- BGA focus moves into design at SMI
What's new(s) at EE Times-interactive
- August 23, 1995
- Taiwan believes China intends to freeze its assets
- IEEE members sift through three reorganization proposals
- Neighboring confinement boosts silicon optoelectronics
- Sharp spins off a DSP startup
- Statistics add up in pattern recognition
- August 22, 1995
- RadiSys joins with Intel to offer embedded core logic
- Integrated DSPs tackle speech apps
- Motorola rolls out VG-AnyLAN MACs for ISA and PCI buses
- Motorola adds voice compression to frame relay boards
- Miro dials PCs via Mwave chip
- Harris EDA extends Encore to include BGAs
- August 21, 1995
- Microsoft looks beyond Windows 95 to Cairo and the Internet
- The high-tech spies have their eye on a growing market
- Apple to let Taiwainese build some Macs--but so far, there's no OS
- Has superscalar architecture gone as far as it can go?
- ArcSys, ISS set $280-million merger, most expensive EDA union ever
- Key-escrow scheme may replace Clipper
- Sony readies multimedia operating system
- Sematech puts the heat on EDA vendors
- Broadcasters, computer mak
ers look for HDTV compromise
Other news sources on Techweb:
V-chip solutions beginning to emerge
By
George Leopold
WASHINGTON -- While politicians debate the thorny issue of technology's role in helping parents cope with violent TV programming, consumer-electronics companies, sensing an emerging market, are beginning to offer possible solutions in the form of controller ICs, decoder software and set-top boxes with on-screen menus for blocking violent programming.
The House voted this month to add a V-chip prov
ision backed by the Clinton administration to its telecommunications reform bill. The measure would require TV manufacturers to include a V-chip in all sets 13 inches or larger. Some Senate Republicans and industry groups like the Electronic Industries Association (EIA) oppose mandating the V-chip.
Meanwhile, a few firms are unveiling proposed solutions. Zilog Inc. (Campbell, Calif.) offers a line of TV-controller and on-screen display chips compatible with an industry data-service specification. Zilog officials say its 16-bit DSP video and control chip already in volume production could offer an affordable V-chip solution with minor software modifications. The chip uses proprietary applications software to decode data services, provide on-screen displays and the control of primary TV functions.
OTA pushes Congress to resolve cryptography issue
By
G
eorge Leopold
WASHINGTON -- Congress must act quickly to resolve the government-industry dispute over the Clinton administration's key-escrow encryption proposal, warns a government study released the day after U.S. officials announced a more flexible encryption plan.
In a report on network security and privacy, the congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) urged lawmakers to consider legislation that would eliminate uncertainties about the key-escrow proposal, such as whether it will be voluntary. Citing declassified government documents, critics charge that administration statements about adopting a voluntary key-escrow standard are contradicted by internal memos favoring a mandatory standard.
The software and other high-tech industries have joined privacy groups in opposing the key-escrow proposal that would give government agencies a set of keys to unlock encrypted messages after obtaining a court order.
"Timely and continuing congressional oversight of cryptography policies
is crucial," OTA said in a report compiled for the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. "Escrowed-encryption initiatives warrant congressional attention because of the public funds that will be spent in deploying them and because negative public perceptions of the processes for developing and deploying encryption standards, and of the standards themselves, may erode public confidence and trust in government and the effectiveness of federal leadership in promoting responsible use of information safeguards."
Taiwanese bemoan slow arrival of P6
By Mark Carroll
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Despite giving five Taiwanese motherboard makers P6 samples earlier this year, Intel does not plan to provide production volumes of the CPU to Taiwanese motherboard makers this year, persistent comments here indicate.
Three second-tier motherboard makers who have not received P6 samples say that Intel will not te
ll them when they can expect to receive them. All three do have sample board specifications and cite difficulties regarding Intel's motherboard design.
A source at one manufacturer said that the described "ATX PCB cannot be sourced here currently and would have to come from Intel." A second firm says that it believes that the P6 CPUs to be initially shipped will not come with on-board cache, as originally designed, because of the transistor count of the MCM (about 11.5 million).
Needs cooling-off
A third motherboard maker says that though it has yet to receive a P6 sample, engineers that have worked with it say that it currently isn't very stable and needs a "very large cooling fan, mounted next to the CPU blowing horizontally" to operate. He also said that, as currently configured, the unobtainable ATX pc board must be used, since "there is too much on-board for a Baby AT board to be used."
Non-Intel chip sets for the P6 will most likely also not be appearing this year from any of the Taiwanese c
hip-set vendors. UMC and SiS all report that though they have seen spec sheets on the P6, they have yet to receive a physical sample.
ASIC sign-off gets extension
By
Richard Goering
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A new EDA environment from VLSI Technology allows users to sign off on one of several third-party simulators and claims to be the first ASIC design system that allows users to work in VHDL or Verilog without net-list translation. The tool set, Design Integrator, reflects a growing trend by ASIC suppliers toward sign-off on third-party tools, making it unnecessary for the foundry to rerun its own simulation.
Through Design Integrator, VLSI now supports sign-off simulation for Mentor Graphics' QuickSim and QuickVHDL, Synopsys's VSS, and Cadence's Leapfrog.
Three Design Integrator environments are available: VHDL, Verilog and Mentor Graphics
. In addition to ASIC libraries, VLSI Technology provides software for tool encapsulation, tool integration, design flow support, and net-list and test-vector checking. A memory-compiler program generates simulation models while a test-integration program performs rule-checking to ensure successful production-testing.
PEP board hosts AutoBahn, Profibus
By
David Lieberman
PITTSBURGH -- The AutoBahn high-speed serial bus hits the streets for the first time next week as PEP Modular Computers rolls out a new 68060-based 3U VMEbus board that hosts the bus. The board also hosts the Profibus field bus, creating an industrial-control development platform that coalesces a powerful real-time engine with local high-speed data movement and full-fledged factory-floor networking.
First announced in 1991, the 1.6-Gbit/second, two-wire differential Aut
oBahn stirred a lot of interest at the time. It still stands heads above alternative serial mechanisms for sheer speed, said Ray Alderman, executive director of the VME International Trade Association (Scottsdale, Ariz.), as well as outstripping most parallel buses. Availability of the bus, though, which uses an ECL gate-array chip jointly crafted with Motorola Semiconductor (Austin, Texas), missed its targeted 1992 introduction date. Interest waned in the interim, said one source, as potential users found alternative vehicles or workarounds for their high-speed data-movement needs.
BGA focus moves into design at SMI
By
Terry Costlow
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- If next week's Surface Mount International (SMI) conference is any indication, ball-grid arrays are shifting quickly from a technical curiosity to a design imperative.
This year's BGA-relat
ed papers for the first time focus extensively on design issues rather than explanations of the technology. Eight of the 37 technical sessions are focused on BGAs, underscoring industry interest in the high-density package.
This year's sessions include presentations on reliability, manufacturing and production processes that are done not by researchers but by such manufacturers as Motorola, Compaq and IBM that are using the surface-mount technology. A panel discussion will focus on the time frame for BGAs to become mainstream in high-density designs. That's a big switch from last year, when skeptics abounded.
On the design side, presentations are also more focused on actual production, not just on theoretical presentations. Rather than detailing the benefits of the package, presenters are providing design guides.
Taiwan believes China intends to freeze its assets
By Mark Carroll
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwan electronics companies, struggling to adapt to changing PC design dynamics in the United States, are facing a potentially greater crisis from Mainland China.
A Taiwanese lawyer and investment advisor to Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), Lee Yung-jan, said this week that he had seen a confidential document from Beijing saying that all Taiwanese assets in China were to be frozen. That comes as the Communist government has been undertaking live missile tests near Taiwan and amid persistent rumors of a Mainland invasion of the island.
Lee said the document declares that Taiwanese businesses will now be unable to use any capital equipment or funds that they have in China. If carried out, this new policy could harm at least 10 percent of Taiwan's information-technology industry--and higher percentages in specific areas.
Fully 21percent of Taiwan's 1994 IT production was offshore, according to Taiwan's Market Intelligence Center (MIC).
"Approximately 35 to 40 percent of thi
s production was from China," according to MIC's director T.C. Tu. For this year, that percentage has greatly increased as Taiwanese companies move production to China in order to keep costs down and insure sufficient sources of labor. Some of Taiwan's core IT industries will be those most widely affected by such a move by the Chinese. In 1994, 40 percent of all Taiwanese monitors, 34 percent of all main boards, 69 percent of all keyboards and 46 percent of all power supplies were made overseas.
IEEE members sift through three reorganization proposals
By
Robert Bellinger
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- After years of discussion, the IEEE-USA Professional Activities Committee for Engineeers (Pace) Conference next month will hear three proposals for restructuring its parent Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
No proposal, as one
participant noted, has been "set in concrete" and all must go through a review process. Revised plans will go before the board of directors in November.
The Traditional model proposes the least change. It recommends a 24-member board, an elected IEEE-USA president and three boards: technical operations, geographical operations and support services.
In the Federation model, all members of a smaller, 21-member board would be members at large. The arrangement calls for unbundling dues so that members pay only for what they want. A "congress" of 60 to 80 delegates would be set up to monitor conflicts between the entities, freeing the board of directors to handle activities of IEEE as a whole.
Under the Matrix model, a larger Assembly, directly elected by members, would elect nine at-large members of the board of directors and provide forums among technical, geographic and professional entities.
Members would have the option to join a wide variety of entities, including regional and professional ones.
Currently, American members are assigned to both regions and IEEE-USA. A key to the proposal is the Assembly matrix structure "which guarantees that every delegate will have at least two constituencies, assuring that each delegate will have a broader role."
Neighboring confinement boosts silicon optoelectronics
TOKYO -- A new approach to building multiple quantum wells using silicon-germanium epitaxial layers has produced a claimed breakthrough for light emission from silicon. A team at the University of Tokyo's Research Center of Advanced Science and Technology (Rcast) has discovered that an energy-band configuration known as a neighboring confinement structure (NCS) dramatically increases the intensity of light emitted from SiGe structures.
The NCS effect was first discovered in gallium phosphide/aluminum phosphide systems, where it created a similar leap in conversion efficiency.
In the Rcast process, the energy-band structure is created by building a tensile-stressed Si layer next to a compressively stressed SiGe layer. The structure is realized in practice by sandwiching the two layers between relaxed SiGe layers. The resulting electron-band configuration confines both electrons and holes in potential wells that are near neighbors. The novel geometry produces electron-hole dynamics that are more like the direct bandgap interaction found in GaAs and InP systems and that consequently produce a similarly strong electro-optical effect.
Sharp spins off a DSP startup
By
Ron Wilson
VANCOUVER, Wash. -- It's not all that unusual to hear of a giant Japanese electronics company buying a hot technology startup. But how often do you hear about a hot startup spinning off from a Japanese colossus? That is exactly the story at B
utterfly DSP Inc.
A year ago, Butterfly was a design group within the Sharp Microelectronics digital design center in Camas, Wash.--a group with a unique concept.
Most digital signal-processing systems do time-domain processing. They create filters by convolution, seek patterns with correlation functions and so forth. But the Butterfly designers observed that many of the common signal-processing operations that are difficult in the time domain are easy in the frequency domain. In fact, some frequency-domain operations can't be done in the time domain at all.
If there was a way to make a fast Fourier transform (FFT) engine fast enough and inexpensive enough, designers could transform incoming data directly into the frequency domain, work on it there and then transform it back into a time series. Butterfly vice president of engineering Michael Fleming found the idea attractive enough to pursue. He succeeded in developing a chip that could do the transforms in real-time for data streams coming in at a 5
0-MHz sample rate.
Statistics add up in pattern recognition
By
R. Colin Johnson
BRIGHTON, Mass. -- Unica Technologies Inc. has expanded the available offerings in a new genre of software that integrates traditional statistical analysis with adaptive learning using neural networks. The company claims the statistical-analysis front end of its Pattern Recognition Workbench reduces development time over dedicated neural-network software packages.
Solving pattern-recognition problems has long been a primary application for neural networks. Most dedicated neural-network software packages, however, try to be general enough for forecasting, optimization and other adaptive tasks.
The success of pattern recognition as an application of neural technology has spawned a new genre of software to serve it: the standalone pattern-recognition package
using neural networks. The first entry in the field, called Partek, was delivered just last year. Unica's Pattern Recognition Workbench (PRW) marks the second offering in the new software genre.
RadiSys joins with Intel to offer embedded core logic
BEAVERTON, Ore. -- Sometimes the needs of a number of organizations can fit together to create an entirely new pattern. It was just that sort of coincidence that is leading RadiSys Corp.--an experienced board-level computer vendor--and Intel Corp. to join for an announcement next week of the first-ever merchant IC product from RadiSys.
The needs of RadiSys, Intel and a large number of embedded-systems designers all converged around Intel's successful 386EX CPU. That chip is a version of the 386 designed specifically for embedded applications. The die carries not only a Windows-compatible 386 execution unit and bus interface but also many of the p
eripheral modules necessary for an embedded core.
But the chip by itself is not sufficient. It lacks such vital elements as a DRAM controller and an ISA bus controller. Yet it is sufficiently different from the 386SX to preclude use of most 386-compatible core-logic chips.
Customers therefore wanted both enough silicon support to build their own CPU boards and, if possible, finished board-level computers for the 386EX.
Intel had similar problems. Intel generally provides evaluation boards for its embedded CPUs. But the company wanted a way to help customers shift from the evaluation board to production without doing a complete redesign.
Integrated DSPs tackle speech apps
By
Ron Wilson
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Recent announcements from National Semiconductor Corp. and Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) illustrate how vendors are applying integrati
on to their favorite architectures to attack consumer markets. In both cases, the markets in question are speech-processing applications, whether for the suddenly trendy digital telephone answering machines, for human interfaces or for digital radios.
For its entry into the market, National called on its new miniRISC architecture, code-named Piranha. The fish in question is the 16-bit member from a school of scalable RISC-like cores. The Piranha architecture combines new ideas such as single-cycle execution with old ideas such as variable instruction lengths for more compact code.
To reach the extremely cost-sensitive market for telephone answering devices (TAD) National exploited the 3-mm2 area of the 16-bit Piranha core. The company assigned control functions to the core, and then combined it on one die with a 16-bit DSP core, ROM, SRAM, bus controllers and I/O. The completed package, the NSAM265, requires only external A/D and D/A converters and flash memory to complete a TAD.
Motorola rolls out VG-AnyLAN MACs for ISA and PCI buses
By
Loring Wirbel
AUSTIN, Texas -- Motorola Inc.'s data-communications operation within the microprocessor and memory-technology group has introduced Medium Access Controllers (MAC) for the new 100 VG-AnyLAN local-area network standard, incorporating ISA or PCI bus interfaces with the VG MAC. At a projected 1996 volume price of $12 for the MC68853 ISA master and $22 for the MC68852 PCI master, Motorola will provide some tough competition for AT&T Microelectronics' Regatta VG chip set as well as for Texas Instruments Inc.'s ThunderLAN, which handles both VG and Fast Ethernet.
VG-AnyLAN is a 100-Mbit/second LAN standard, developed by Hewlett-Packard Co. with input from AT&T Co. and other vendors, which can handle low-latency traffic through special packet-prioritization methods in the hub. When it was fin
alized two months ago in the IEEE's 802.12 standard, support was provided for mapping both Ethernet and token-ring frames into the VG packet protocol. Mike Shoemake, program manager for data communications at Motorola, said his company was the first to implement the token-ring mapping portion of the VG spec in silicon.
Motorola adds voice compression to frame relay boards
By
Loring Wirbel
MANSFIELD, Mass. -- Motorola Inc.'s proprietary voice-compression algorithms have shown up in new "VoiceRelay" add-in boards for the 65XX router series from the company's Information Systems Group (ISG). ISG has also added a high-end 6560 router platform to link several branch offices in one regional office.
Several technologies form the core of Motorola's VoiceRelay offerings. The Codex Vector-Sum Excited Linear Predictive (CVSELP) compression algorithms wo
rk in 8- and 16-kbit modes and are based on work done for Motorola's cellular-phone business. Additional support for digital speech interpolation and echo cancellation was added to the voice compression. The entire suite is implemented in ISA add-in boards using a 68360 processor and dual 56166 DSP processors.
Miro dials PCs via Mwave chip
By
Rick Boyd-Merritt
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Riding the wave of new computer/telephony adapter cards for the PC, Miro Computer Products Inc. has started shipping its MiroConnect 34 board. Based on IBM's Mwave digital signal processor, the new board marks the Braunschweig, Germany-based company's foray into the U.S. OEM market.
Through its Mwave DSP-2780, the board offers SoundBlaster-compatible 16-bit wavetable sound synthesis, including 3-D sound, and a V.34 fax modem supporting fax speeds up to 14.4 k
bits/second and data rates up to 28.8 kbits/s.
"Picking the IBM DSP meant that our design effort was more complex, but ultimately it was worth it," said Bob Butchko, president of the U.S. division of Miro. "We picked the Mwave because we wanted a programmable solution, and we wanted to have the 28.8 [kbit] speed before we released the product to give the board some differentiation in the market."
Typical of PC computer/telephony boards, Miro also spent a significant amount of time pulling together a host of features and a friendly interface for the product. The Connect 34 board supports caller ID and offers voice-mail with remote-access features, a full-duplex speakerphone, a telephone answering device and music-on-hold. The board also supports pager notification of calls and faxes, and offers interfaces to a variety of CD-ROM players including IDE, as well as proprietary interfaces for Sony and Mitsumi drives.
Harris EDA extends Encore to include BGAs
By
Richard Goering
FISHERS, N.Y. -- The growing use of ball-grid arrays (BGA) in such markets as telecommunications and computers has led Harris EDA to introduce Encore BGA, an extended version of the Encore MCM placement and routing tool. Developed in cooperation with Amkor Electronics (Phoenix), a BGA packaging company, the new software is aimed at single- and few-chip modules.
Compared with Encore MCM, the BGA package adds new capabilities in wire-bond generation and the ability to route without net-lists. While Encore BGA retains most of the placement and routing capabilities of Encore MCM, the new package is aimed at modules with less than ten chips.
One new capability is generation of wire-bond patterns for BGAs. While wire-bond patterns for other types of devices tend to be perpendicular to the die, the wire-bond pads used for BGAs often form a radial pattern, noted Kevin Rinebold,
manager of applications engineering. Encore BGA automatically generates such patterns and supports fixed-distance rules.
Microsoft looks beyond Windows 95 to Cairo and the Internet
By
Alexander Wolfe
REDMOND, Wash. -- As Microsoft's marketing gurus launch Windows 95 this week amid a swirl of media events and parties, the company's software engineers will hoist nothing stronger than Jolt cola. They're closeted at headquarters here working overtime to fill in the technological gaps in Microsoft's software infrastructure.
Their efforts are spurred by Bill Gates' grand strategy to dominate the software universe. His plan extends beyond the desire to equip every desktop PC with Windows 95, and every workstation with Windows NT. Those are simply milestones toward the ultimate objective: Microsoft wants to rule the network.
To that end, Microsoft i
s racing to develop enabling technologies in two crucial areas. First and foremost is the forging of tighter ties between Microsoft's operating systems and the World Wide Web. The link will be a new scripting language now in development, based on the company's hugely popular Visual Basic technology, sources close to Microsoft told
EETimes
.
The language would, for example, allow end users to create macros that could function as "software agents," automatically scouring the Internet for desired documents and information. The sources said the language could be released next year. Microsoft officials were unavailable for comment.
The second, equally important, effort centers on distributed computing--the ability to seamlessly access remote data and applications as easily as if they resided on a local hard drive. Here, work centers on Cairo--a next-generation version of Windows NT currently in the works--and Microsoft's companion object-linking-and-embedding (OLE) technology.
The high-tech spies have their eye on a growing market
By
George Leopold
MCLEAN, Va. -- In a world short on trust, you can bet you're being watched.
Insurance fraud, cheating spouses, crooked business partners, disgruntled employees and general lawlessness all are fueling the growth of a surveillance industry capitalizing on the fear of crime and lack of trust. The industry's wares--and life's unseemly side--were in full view at a recent spy exposition at which it became clear that America's private eyes are using semiconductor technology to reduce the size of eavesdropping devices like surveillance cameras and hidden microphones that can be concealed nearly anywhere.
Vendors hawked spy cameras the size of a dime hidden in eyeglasses, watches, pens, neckties, signs, mirrors, women's jewelry, even trash cans. All are designed to record the unsuspecting crook, intr
uder, cheating business partner or spouse, whiplashed accident victim out for a jog, drug dealers and their customers while providing users a new-found sense of security in a dangerous world. Maybe so, but others warn that as technology outpaces ethics and the law, it is also eroding privacy protections.
The macho world of electronic surveillance, populated by fast-talking salesmen and shady characters with pagers and nicknames like Slick, includes divisions of large corporations like Raytheon Co. and retailers like Washington's Spy Shop. That store was one of several around the country raided recently by government agents for allegedly selling illegal wiretapping equipment. In between are outfits like CIA Inc. (Counter Intelligence Applications Inc.) and UFO (Unlimited Facts Obtained) that were among the 56 vendors at Surveillance Expo '95 here.
How's business? One clue: the spy folk plan to meet here again next year.
Apple to let Taiwainese build some Macs--but so far, there's no OS
By Mark Carroll
HSINCHU, Taiwan -- Treading gingerly in a country that could make Macintosh a viable clone business, Apple Computer Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.) has agreed to let selected computer vendors here build certain models of low-cost Mac clones for the Comdex/Fall trade show. But the company has yet to agree to give out the crown jewels--licenses for the Mac operating systems. That hesitance is frustrating vendors here and again raising questions about Apple's stated intention to open up the architecture.
The New Taiwan PC Consortium, organized by the Taiwan government-assisted Computer and Communication Research Laboratories, has been pressing Apple for a deal in time for the fall selling season. The group has already designed a variety of PowerPC 601-, 603- and 604-based systems, and is now designing some low-cost 603- and 604-based systems according to a specification approved by Apple for the mac
hines to be displayed this fall.
According to the deal CCL is trying to strike, two or three consortium members would get unrestricted rights to market the Mac OS any way they see fit, but only on the models that are approved by Apple. The consortium currently has seven members: DTK Computer, First International Computer, Mitac, Tatung, Umax, USI and one member that has asked to remain anonymous.
Chi-Yuan Chin, director of CCL's computer systems technology division and a leading member of the Taiwan PowerPC consortium, said he hopes the Taiwan Mac clones will start to flow in two stages. This year, he hopes, a select group of the seven consortium members will be able to ship systems based on the models recently approved by Apple, and by mid-1996, when the PowerPC Common Hardware Reference Platform is completed, all the members are expected to get Mac OS licenses for CHRP-compliant systems. As of July the CHRP spec was still in a beta release.
--Additional reporting by Rick Boyd-Merritt and Brian F
uller
Has superscalar architecture gone as far as it can go?
By
Ron Wilson
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Papers on new microprocessors at the Hot Chips conference here last week raised a novel question: are we approaching the end of history for superscalar architectures? New information on a freshly-announced PowerPC chip, new details on the Intel P6, revelations about Cyrix' plans for the next generation beyond the M1 and research reports from the software community all hinted in the affirmative. There may not be another generation of superscalar CPUs much more complex than chips that have already been announced.
The PowerPC 603e-166, known within the Somerset Design Center as the 603ev, gave an interesting perspective on the problem. According to sources at Somerset, the chip was designed specifically to meet the needs of Apple computer in its con
tinuing migration away from the 68000 architecture. The design started with the PowerPC 603 and 603e--already one generation beyond the original PowerPC 601 used in early Power Macs--and attempted to both improve performance for desktops and create a new offering for portable computing.
As such, the chip could very well have moved further in the superscalar direction--away from the single-ALU 603 and toward the highly superscalar PowerPC 620. But that is not what the design team chose to do.
"The chip is basically the 603e moved to a new process and with a few tweaks," explained Douglas Balser, development engineering manager for IBM. "By using the process IBM designates as CMOS5X, we get a substantial increase in clock frequency--to 166 MHz--and a 30 percent increase in density, mainly from using all five layers of metal."
ArcSys, ISS set $280-million merger, most expensive EDA union ever
By
Richard Goering
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Announcing what appears to be the most expensive merger in EDA history, ArcSys Inc. and Integrated Silicon Systems Inc. (Research Triangle Park, N.C.) have stated their intention to form a new company in a stock swap currently valued at over $280 million. The two young, fast-moving companies are shooting for dominance in the IC CAD marketplace--and given the high market valuations of both companies, they have little option other than to become an EDA powerhouse.
The merged company, which has yet to be named, may pose the most serious threat that Cadence Design Systems (San Jose, Calif.) has experienced to its traditional market leadership in IC CAD. Both ArcSys, a provider of placement and routing tools, and ISS, a supplier of verification and extraction tools, have recently gone public, experienced meteoric rises in stock prices and enjoyed rapid revenue growth.
Although ISS is slightly larger in personnel and r
evenues, and both companies are presenting the deal as a merger of equals, ArcSys initiated the merger and is technically acquiring ISS. ArcSys will exchange 1.5 shares of common stock for each of roughly 4.4 million outstanding shares of ISS stock. The actual value will be unknown until the deal is completed in October.
Key-escrow scheme may replace Clipper
By
George Leopold
WASHINGTON -- On the heels of a shift in U.S. encryption policy to permit software solutions, hardware and software versions of commercial key-escrow schemes are emerging to help break a two-year-old policy logjam.
The Clinton administration announced a framework last week that would allow U.S. companies to export encryption technologies based on either software or customized ICs. The announcement marked a departure from the government's April 1993 proposal for the Clipp
er chip. Based on a classified algorithm developed by the National Security Agency, it has drawn stiff industry opposition.
Under the framework, law-enforcement agencies would still get the keys to unscramble encrypted data after obtaining a court order.
"The market wants both" hardware and software solutions, said Michael Nelson, Vice President Gore's special assistant for information technology. "We have guidelines . . . we'd like to turn into specifications" so companies could begin exporting products by the end of the year.
The government will hold a workshop next month to discuss the proposed liberalization of export controls for key-escrow software with key lengths up to 64 bits. U.S. officials said the proposals came in response to concerns that the Clipper plan did not provide for a software version.
Sony readies multimedia operating system
By
Alexander Wolfe
and
Junko Yoshida
TOKYO -- Sony appears poised to take its advanced "Apertos" operating-system technology out of the research lab and aim it squarely at multimedia and video-on-demand applications.
Apertos, developed at Sony Corp.'s computer-science laboratory here, has long been characterized by the company as a research effort. But reports surfaced here last week that Sony will showcase Apertos at the upcoming Telecom 95 conference in Geneva in October. Moreover, Sony reportedly plans to begin technical trials of Apertos next month in video-on-demand applications.
Initially, Apertos was implemented on the MIPS microprocessor architecture. It's not known whether Apertos has been ported to other processors. However, Sony has long viewed MIPS as a favorable platform for video-on-demand. Sony's latest efforts in the interactive arena include its 32-bit videogame console called Playstation and the company's yet-to-be-announced second-gen
eration personal communicator using General Magic's Magic Cap software. Both have been targeted at the MIPS microprocessor.
Sematech puts the heat on EDA vendors
By
Richard Goering
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- With dire warnings of a "productivity crisis" that could cost the electronics industry billions of dollars, Sematech summoned EDA vendors and researchers to two Silicon Valley meetings within the past 10 days. One meeting was a request for technology for a 0.25-micron hierarchical design system; the second was to convene an industry council to pass judgment on EDA standards.
Sematech is awarding contracts for technology development in hopes of building a design infrastructure to support the Semiconductor Industry Association's (SIA) road map for deep-submicron silicon (see
Sematech launches an EDA initia
tive
). But EDA vendors attending the meetings expressed mixed feelings about the request for technology.
Some questioned whether the relatively small amount of funding the government/industry consortium is likely to contribute, given on a 20 percent "cost-sharing" basis, makes it worthwhile to pursue a contract.
"I'm not sure that this kind of military procurement approach is the right way to get funded," said Paul McLellan, vice president for technology at Compass Design Automation (San Jose).
Still, Sematech representatives made a strong case that action is needed. Chip vendors stand to lose $12 billion and the U.S. electronics industry $100 billion if the crisis in design productivity isn't resolved by 1998, said Dick Bushroe, director of Sematech's ECAD program.
"The problem for the 1990s is that manufacturing technology is getting ahead of what design teams are capable of doing," said Greg Ledenbach, director of Sematech's design thrust.
Broadcasters, computer makers look for HDTV compromise
By
George Leopold
WASHINGTON -- Both sides in the dispute over the U.S. advanced- TV (ATV) standard sat down together here to seek common ground on ensuring compatibility between high-definition TV (HDTV) and computer displays. What emerged was not so much a compromise as an agreement to disagree and grudging acceptance of both industries' concerns.
With a government advisory panel aiming to recommend an advanced-TV standard to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in November, the interoperability dispute will have to be settled during an upcoming FCC rule-making on the ATV standard scheduled to begin this fall. U.S. officials provided more details about the standard-endorsement proceeding and a related review launched in July during last week's meeting on the future of digital TV sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Elect
ronics Engineers and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.
|
RSS
RSS| 
Digital| 
Mobile
