EET-i Top of the News
Week of September 4, 1995
- September 7, 1995
 NII copyright changes sought
- Taiwan focuses on Digital Still Cameras for multimedia PCs
- Motorola motherboard declares independence
- Digital spins stacked hubs
- AMD's Mach 5 complex PLD aims at low end of FPGA market
- SGS, National propose bus for home entertainment electronics
- HP enters recordable CD-ROM market with low-cost writer
What's new(s) at EE Times-interactive
- September 6, 1995
- Military computer sales seen surging
- German researchers devise I/O system for 'biochips'
- AFM probe finds electrical failures in quarter-micron chips
- SRAM research focuses on simple scalable architectures
- Navy hopes low-cost FEDs sail
- September 5, 1995
- Dallas Semi's new fashion statement: chip-based decoder rings
- Synopsys VSS automates regression testing
- Quicklogic adds VHDL support
- Veda rolls VHDL 'Verdict'
- Mitsubishi launches pre-processor for Philips ghost canceller
- New notebooks hit the market; Apple is surprising laggard
- Efficient Networks is shipping LAN emulation software
- September 4, 1995
- EDA industry jumping on Windows NT bandwagon
- Nature of R&D budget cuts still unclear
- Flamm predicts technology-conversion programs will survive
- MGM/UA's "Hackers" Web site draws real hackers -- and FBI attention
- Intel, Hitachi to face off in PDA arena
- TI patent award reversed
- Motorola revamps its 68360 Quicc line
- National fires wireless push with ceramic tech
Other news sources on Techweb:
NII copyright changes sought
By
George Leopold
WASHINGTON -- U.S. and, eventually, international copyright laws should be fine-tuned to speed the infobahn's transition from communications to commerce, a government report released this week recommends.
U.S. officials heading a panel on intellectual-
property rights and the National Information Infrastructure (NII) argued that current copyright laws are adequate to protect digital content but that several changes are needed to account for technological change. "The coat is getting a little tight," said the panel's report on intellectual-property protections in cyberspace. "There is no need for a new one, but the old one needs a few alterations."
Without adequate intellectual-property protection, the NII and accompanying global networks will remain nothing more than basic communications systems, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown warned in releasing the report. "Unless we provide legal protection for intellectual property on the NII, customers won't be able to reap the benefits of these new [electronic commerce] technologies," said Brown, who also serves as chairman of the White House Task Force on the NII.
Taiwan focuses on Digital Still Cameras for m
ultimedia PCs
By Mark Carroll
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Following Sony Corp.'s lead, at least one Taiwanese company is readying digital cameras for use as both standalone units and as part of PC multimedia systems. Behavior Tech Computer Co. (BTC) will have samples of its Digital Still Camera (DSC) in March 1996, said Jason Wang, CCD camera project manager for BTC.
BTC's DSC is based on technology it has licensed from the Taiwan government's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). But, said Wang, "our DSC uses a different architecture than ITRI's design." Its PC interface also differs from ITRI's-- ITRI uses a SCSI interface while BTC uses Texas Instruments' new 1394 "Firewire" serial bus.
Wang said that by May of 1996, BTC will sample a digital video camera using the 1394 serial bus, with mass production of both products--the standalone unit and the Firewire-equipped PC version--planned for the fourth quarter of 1996.
BTC is one of Taiwan's major keyboard producers as well as an add-o
n-card manufacturer. In 1994, BTC had revenues of $146 million and a net profit margin of 7.62 percent, one of the highest in Taiwan's information-technology industry.
Motorola motherboard declares independence
By
David Lieberman
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Motorola's Computer Group will fire off its second motherboard salvo, a processor-independent system board called the Chameleon, at the Embedded Systems Conference next week. The motherboard is the first to contain the PMC (PCI Mezzanine Card) standard on-board, rather than the familiar edge-card PCI interface of the desktop world, using the mezzanine structure to configure different processor-memory complexes on the same base platform.
Coming about one year after Motorola's initial entry into the motherboard fray with a PowerPC-based line, the Chameleon continues the company's modularization
of its product lines to create a range of product offerings from a minimal number of base models. Like the first Moto motherboards introduced a year ago, it essentially duplicates the functionality of a simultaneously introduced VMEbus board, giving customers a migration path to a smaller, lower-cost alternative. But unlike the maiden entry, the Chameleon gives customers a choice of moving to the PowerPC or sticking with a 68000-family processor as they move from a backplane to a motherboard strategy. Jerry Gipper, director of marketing for embedded technologies, said the Chamelon could also accommodate other, non-Motorola processors.
Digital spins stacked hubs
By
Loring Wirbel
PARIS -- At next week's NetWorld+Interop Paris, Digital Equipment Corp.'s network products business will try to put a new spin on stackable hubs. To ready card-level m
odules from its DEChub 90 line for stackable applications, Digital has created a MultiStack System with stackable insertion units resembling a PC docking station.
Stackable hubs represent the low end of the hub market, in which some functionality is sacrificed to offer the lowest possible price per port. More often than not, stackable hubs are repackaged dumb multiport repeaters, linked in the back through simple ribbon cables that let users add LAN nodes by stacking multiple units on top of one another. As more and more LAN vendors have entered the stackable realm, stackable-hub architectures have expanded to include manageability through the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), and occasionally some limited LAN-switching capability. Developers have to be careful in adding feature sets, however, since the attractiveness of stackables declines if the per-port price exceeds $80.
AMD's Mach 5 co
mplex PLD aims at low end of FPGA market
By
Brian Fuller
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Advanced Micro Devices will fire at a new segment of the programmable-logic business on Monday with a complex-PLD architecture that's designed to improve design flexibility and steal some business from the low end of the FPGA market.
The 3.3-V Mach 5 from AMD's "Value Plus" family is designed with an eye toward low power consumption and fast speed, at 7.5 ns optimally. It also pushes into an area of density--above 300 macrocells--where AMD's programmable offerings have yet to inhabit.
"Our intent with the Mach 5 is to drive the volume up to higher density" from the lower-density Mach 1, 2, 3, 4 families, said Chris Henry, AMD's marketing director for programmable logic.
The most significant part of the announcement is a new architectural approach that AMD brings to its programmable-logic offerings. The company has moved away from the older non-hierarchical, large s
witch-matrix approach in previous Mach families to a hierarchical scheme.
SGS, National propose bus for home entertainment electronics
By
Peter Clarke
BRISTOL, England -- SGS-Thomson Microelectronics (STM) and National Semiconductor Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) have joined forces to propose a digital bus standard that links home-entertainment equipment.
In Home Digital Entertainment Network, or IHDEN, is divided in two: IHDEN-line covers simple point-to-point links, while clusters that might be linked by various wiring topologies are covered by IHDEN-plane.
The planned standard responds to a request for proposals from the Electronic Industries Association's (EIA) R-4.1 subcommittee for a digital baseband-interconnect system aimed at consumer-entertainment devices.
Today, most video equipment, including satellite and cable decoders an
d VCRs, use an analog coaxial cable link to provide compatibility with the VHF connection of TV receivers designed for terrestrial broadcasts.
Colin Whitby-Strevens, manager of collaborative projects at STM, said his company and National had previously submitted separate proposals to the EIA. And the EIA has now decided its digital standard should be partitioned into two interfaces rather than one. "We decided to take the best of each of our proposals and offer something jointly," Whitby-Strevens said.
HP enters recordable CD-ROM market with low-cost writer
By
Terry Costlow
LOVELAND, Colo. -- Hewlett-Packard Co. charges into the recordable-CD-ROM market, breaking cost and complexity barriers that have limited market acceptance of the technology thus far. Designed for use with PCs, HP's SureStore CD-Writer comes bundled with adapters and so
ftware and is expected to have a street price of about $1,099.
Some observers believe that HP's foray into recordable CD-ROMs, which are used to duplicate software and create multimedia presentations, will help fuel strong growth.
"The bottom-end pricing before HP was around $1,300," said John Freeman, president of Strategic Marketing Decisions (Los Gatos, Calif.). "HP's participation certainly improves the prospects for the market, which has already shown every evidence of growing monumentally."
Military computer sales seen surging
By
Margaret Ryan
SUDBURY, Mass. -- The military-computer segment will lead the worldwide OEM markets in growth over the next two years, surpassing the annual growth rates of such larger segments as industrial automation and telecommunications, according a new study by the Technology Research Institute (TRI).
Much of the growth will come from sales of commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) products as the military turns to standard systems for all but the most critical applications.
"While the military has tended to scare away commercial suppliers in the past, today it's clearly embracing open systems technology and smoothing the way for buying big volumes of COTS computers in the future," TRI notes in a synopsis of its research.
The study, completed in the spring, found that the merchant military-computer market totaled $589 million in 1994 and predicts an increase to nearly $1.09 billion in 1997, said research director Dan Baker at TRI, a division of
S. Klein Communications Inc. "It's an incredible opportunity for companies positioned in this market," Baker said.
German researchers devise I/O system for 'biochips'
By
R. Colin Johnson
MARTIN
SRIED, Germany -- Saying their discovery could lead to true "biochips," researchers here at the Max-Planck-Instituts fur Biochemie have devised a mechanism for interfacing living neurons with electronic compo-
nents. In a report on the project, the researchers describe how to inject signals into living neurons and extract them back out--a process that theoretically could enable future interfaces between microchips and the brain.
Scientists envision the use of biochips to augment normal human abilities or to correct disabilities--anything from putting an encyclopedia "on-line" in a human brain to enabling a blind person to see. Such heady applications are still years away, but the institute's demonstration of an input/output system between electronic hardware and the "wetware" of the nervous system could be a crucial first step.
The research was reported by professor Peter Formherz, director of the Membran und Neurophysik laboratory at Max-Planck. The lab has followed several simultaneous threads to s
olve the problems of interfacing the world of flowing currents with the world of flowing chemicals. One project involves training neurons to grow connections down prescribed paths on semiconductor wafers, with an eye toward enabling the computer of the future.
AFM probe finds electrical failures in quarter-micron chips
By Gail Robinson
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- As device feature sizes shrink to 0.25 micron or less, finding the source of an electrical failure in a chip can prove vexing. Using nanofabrication techniques, a new temperature-sensing probe based on atomic-force microscope (AFM) techniques could locate hot spots down to nanometer resolution.
A common method for pinpointing failure has been examining the thermal characteristics: A cold spot signals an open circuit; a hot spot reveals the increased current of a short circuit. But while traditional thermal methods--such as infr
ared emission thermometry, liquid crystals and photon probing techniques--work for resolutions from 0.3 micron up, they fall short at smaller dimensions because diffraction limits their spatial resolution.
Researchers at the Department of Mechanical and Environmental Engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) report they have successfully used AFM techniques to locate a hot spot created by a short-circuit between the gate and the drain of a silicon MOSFET with a spatial resolution of 0.5 micron. Now they are further developing the thermal imaging technique to yield spatial resolution in the 0.05-micron range.
SRAM research focuses on simple scalable architectures
By
Chappell Brown
LOS ANGELES -- Recent research into static-RAM processing points the way to simpler, scalable SRAM architectures that could find applica
tion in fast, super-dense memory chips or in smaller, high-performance memories for embedded applications.
While DRAM designers have devised a seemingly endless number of process tricks that allow them to shrink memory-cell size, static-RAM designers are up against a more complex problem, and the higher-performance memory type has thus lagged the DRAM in density. The latest SRAM research efforts are aimed at either reducing the number of transistors per cell (by building devices that perform multiple functions) or creating transistor configurations that are easy to scale down in size.
Current SRAMs fall into two basic categories: less dense, six-transistor cells, using full CMOS technology, for smaller embedded-memory applications; and a slightly more exotic, four-transistor cell technology yielding denser memory chips.
By using thin film or polysilicon transistors for the load, the four-transistor technology can reduce cell size but at the cost of additional processing steps. It is therefore used in
commodity chip lines, for which the added complexity can be written off through volume sales.
Navy hopes low-cost FEDs sail
By
George Leopold
WASHINGTON -- A new technique demonstrated by Navy researchers for fabricating field-emitter arrays could simplify the manufacture of field-emitter displays (FEDs). While the researchers have yet to obtain emission results, they say the arrays could provide a low-cost alternative to the expensive active-matrix LCDs that currently dominate the flat-panel-display market.
Engineers at the Naval Research Laboratory here based the field-emitter fabrication method on conformal chemical-beam deposition. The vertical thin-film-edge structures that resulted "ought to be fundamentally better than conical emitters [used in current FEDs] in high-emission currents, low-voltage operation and high packing densi
ty, and they should be extremely economical to manufacture," NRL researchers David Hsu and Henry Gray reported in a paper delivered last month at the International Vacuum Microelectronics Conference in Portland, Ore.
With expensive lithography steps eliminated, the Navy researchers predict they can reduce FED-production costs by at least 50 percent and can eventually eliminate the need for lithography altogether.
Dallas Semi's new fashion statement: chip-based decoder rings
By
Ashok Bindra
DALLAS -- Since the dawn of civilization, rings have signified power, prestige, love and accomplishment. Now, chip manufacturer Dallas Semiconductor has teamed with jewelry supplier Jostens Inc. to create a digital decoder ring that is a repository of data and ID for personal computers.
By touching the ring's face to a data reader, information can be in
stantly read or written to perform such tasks as identification, inventory transaction or data retrieval. In addition, said Dallas Semi, each ring is encoded according to the American Banking Association Standard, which emulates Visa or MasterCard credit cards, to facilitate electronic commerce.
In its partnership with Jostens (Minneapolis), Dallas Semi has extended its touch-memory technology into another form factor. Depending on applications, the company said, other form factors will be created to carry digitized information. Memory chips--ROM, EPROM, Li-backed SRAM or E2PROM--up to 64 kbits with built-in read/write functions and one-wire communications interface are embedded in a 16-mm-diameter stainless steel can. That can is retrofitted in a custom-designed metal ring to create the information-carrying decoder ring.
"This new ring communicates directly with your PC to authenticate you as an owner," said Michael Bolan, vice president of product development at Dallas Semiconductor.
Synopsys VSS automates regression testing
By
Stan Runyon
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Since the Pentium debacle, designers have become more sensitized than ever about design verification and debugging. Unfortunately, verifying timing and functionality remains a manual affair.
"That affair can take up to half of designers' time as they write and edit their regression testbenches," said Synopsys Inc. product line manager Farhad Hayat. As a result, though simulation advances have shortened ASIC verification times, testbench development and debugging remain major bottlenecks in VHDL-based designs.
Synopsys proposes a solution: TestBench Manager. An off-the-shelf option to the company's VHDL System Simulator (VSS), TestBench manager cuts testbench development time by automatically generating block-level testbenches from the system-level testbench.
TestBench Man
ager creates a VHDL testbench for any block of a design by capturing the stimulus and response around that block during top-level, or system, simulation. Because of that automatic capability, "what-if" options can be sampled without eating up inordinate time.
Quicklogic adds VHDL support
By
Richard Goering
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Complementing the Verilog synthesis that's already offered, Quicklogic Corp. has added free VHDL synthesis support to its QuickWorks FPGA development software. The QuickWorks 5.1 release also adds language templates, Verilog source-level debugging and an improved schematic user interface.
To provide the VHDL support, Quicklogic is using software from Synplicity Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.), the same company that provides Quicklogic's Verilog synthesis. "We get excellent results from Synplicity," said Ed Smith, Quickl
ogic director of marketing. "The run times are pretty much unbelievable."
Smith said that Quicklogic is seeing demand for both Verilog and VHDL and that it thus decided to support both. He noted that many new HDL users have yet to choose between the languages. Overall, about 20 percent of Quicklogic's customers are using HDLs, but that figure is "growing very rapidly," he added.
Veda rolls VHDL 'Verdict'
By
Stan Runyon
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- If Veda Design Automation has its way, designers no longer will have to leave their VHDL design environments to perform fault simulation. The problem with going back and forth, of course, is the need to correlate results or convert between two different language domains--often a frustrating, error-prone practice.
Veda's solution is Verdict, a mixed-level VHDL fault simulator that determines the fault c
overage of a circuit described as a Vital net-list and accompanying behavioral VHDL testbench.
The Hants, a U.K.-based company, said that because Verdict uses Vital models, rather than proprietary language models, it is the first fault simulator that lets designers completely sign off simulation in one environment. Naturally, Veda hopes that environment includes Vulcan, the company's accelerated Vital-compliant VHDL simulator.
Mitsubishi launches pre-processor for Philips ghost canceller
By
Junko Yoshida
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Mitsubishi Electronics America Inc. has launched a preprocessor IC for ghost-cancellation systems that complies with Philips' Ghost Cancellation Reference (GCR) signal standard.
The mixed-signal interface IC, when used with a single-chip video-rate adaptive equalizer IC developed by Oren Semiconductor and a standard 8
- or 9-bit video A/D converter, will constitute a complete ghost-cancellation chip set.
Designated M52661SP, the Mitsubishi chip provides video-sync detection and digital-to-analog conversion.
First, when baseband video signals reach Mitsubishi's analog chip, the IC will start looking specifically at a sync signal that comes at line 21 and will capture it, parsing it onto an off-the-shelf A/D chip.
Once the signal is converted into digital, it will be passed onto Oren's chip, called OR43100 -- incorporated with a 576 tap digital filter, an adaptive equalizer DSP engine, system memory and embedded software. Oren's chip will examine the difference between the known characteristics of GCR signal waveforms stored in memory and the actual waveforms received by TV, and eliminate ghosts by digitally filtering them.
Such a digitally filtered signal will be handed back to Mitsubishi's chip, whose on-chip 10-bit D/A converter will convert it back into analog. The Mitsubishi chip will also synchronize the ti
ming while putting 12-dB gain back into the signal to provide de-ghosted analog signals to a TV display.
New notebooks hit the market; Apple is surprising laggard
By
Rick Boyd-Merritt
NEW YORK -- In the past it was an accepted truth of the computer world that Apple Computer Inc. (Cupertino, Calif,) lead the charge into multimedia while makers of X86-based systems pushed harder on the price/performance curve. But if recent launches of notebook computers from Apple, Compaq Computer Corp. (Houston) and the notebook division of Texas Instruments Inc. (Temple, Texas) are any indication, that trend is being flip-flopped.
Apple's latest family of PowerBooks is aimed at meeting or beating price points from Apple's closest X86-based competitors, sacrificing multimedia features along the way. Compaq's new LTE 5000 and, to a lesser extent, TI's ne
w TravelMate 5100 are aimed at power users and pack in new multimedia capabilities for a price premium.
"Basically our task was to make a PowerPC-based portable and unfortunately we were hoping to do that quickly, said Mark Seibert an engineer in Apple's PowerBook group. The initial PowerPC 60 chip destined for portables, however, did not match up to Apple's performance expectations and set off a redesign that resulted in the PowerPC 603e used in the new notebooks. The new chip features expanded internal caches and internal speeds up to 117 MHz.
"The impact [of the chip re-design] on our schedule was very big--a good nine months," Seibert said.
Efficient Networks is shipping LAN emulation software
By
Loring Wirbel
DALLAS -- Asynchronous Transfer Mode pioneer Efficient Networks Inc. is shipping software to implement the ATM Forum's LAN Emul
ation (LANE) standards for servers. LANE client software is becoming a virtual necessity for ATM network-interface-card vendors to offer, but LANE server implementations are usually tied to one system-level vendor's end-to-end ATM switch system.
David Chiswell, director of marketing at Efficient, said that many developers wish to experiment with server-based IP message transport over ATM but don't want to be tied to a single ATM switch. Efficient is offering the standard LANE server, LANE configuration server and broadcast/unknown-server packages as defined by the forum. Depending on the configuration of the network, one of the three server packages can be used to gain information from any node with resident ATM LANE client software.
EDA industry jumping on Windows NT bandwagon
By
David Lammers
and
Richard Wallace
TOKYO -- Microsoft's NT operating system rolled through the electronic-design-automation industry last week, as Viewlogic said it would unveil its complete NT offering this month and Cadence Design Systems disclosed plans to phase in Windows and NT CAD applications while What's more, Mentor Graphics is preparing a Windows-based schematic-entry product,
EE Times
has learned.
Viewlogic is expected to roll out a complete suite of design tools running under Windows NT at the EuroDAC conference, starting Sept. 18 in the United Kingdom. The tool set will include applications from Viewlogic subsidiaries Quad Design, Vantage and Chronologic Simulation that, until now, were available only under Unix.
Cadence is beginning its NT effort more modestly, with a Windows NT-based version of its Allegro pc-board layout software that president Joe Costello said will be sold by VARs outside the Cadence sales force. Costello declined to comment on reports that the NT-based version of Allegro will suppor
t a Cooper & Chyan Technology router and would not support Microsoft's object-linking and embedding technology.
Mentor Graphics is apparently closer to a Windows announcement. EE Times has learned that its PCB division is preparing a Windows 95 and Windows NT schematic-entry product for introduction this month.
Nature of R&D budget cuts still unclear
By
George Leopold
WASHINGTON -- As Congress rejoins a budget battle this week that could lead to a government shutdown, observers are predicting a mixed bag of results for technology funding.
The Senate is expected to approve one more year of funding for Sematech, the chip-manufacturing consortium based in Austin, Texas. Sematech announced last year it would end reliance on federal funding by fiscal 1997. The Clinton administration requested $90 million for next year as part of the Adva
nced Research Projects Agency budget. The House wants to eliminate fiscal 1996 funding for Sematech. Observers said that the Senate position might prevail, perhaps at for less than the administration's request.
The Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP) also could receive approval in the Senate, which is scheduled to vote this week on a defense-authorization bill. A Senate committee voted earlier to approve $238 million to continue current TRP programs in fiscal 1996--less than half the amount the White House had requested. The House has voted to kill the program, which funds a variety of dual-use technology efforts, including the Defense Department's flat-panel display initiative.
Flamm predicts technology-conversion programs will survive
By
George Leopold
WASHINGTON -- Speaking publicly for the first time since his resignation last spring as
head of the Pentagon's Dual-Use Technology Office, Kenneth Flamm told EE Times that he is confident the U.S. flat-panel display initiative and other technology-conversion programs will prevail over the forces aligned against them on Capitol Hill.
The fate of the display initiative and other dual-use programs has been in doubt for months, as Congress has threatened to curtail or cut off funding. Before ending his two-year stint in July to return to the Brookings Institution, Flamm had been the Pentagon's point man on the display initiative, which seeks to ensure military access to display technology.
"I think we put the infrastructure in place to make dual-use happen," Flamm said. "Whether it's seen to fruition depends on the comings and goings of officials."
Flamm conceded that the shifting political winds since the November elections have stalled the dual-use effort but argued that the "momentum is unstoppable" for expanded military use of civilian technology. He predicted the Advanced Research Pro
jects Agency (ARPA), which funds the U.S. Display Consortium (USDC, San Jose, Calif.) will continue to promote flat-panel displays despite the expected elimination by Congress of a key funding source for display development: the Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP)."There's plenty of continuity there," Flamm said.
MGM/UA's "Hackers" Web site draws real hackers -- and FBI attention
By
Larry Lange
LOS ANGELES -- A seemingly innocuous World Wide Web site on the Internet has thrown open the door to the shadowy world of computer hacking. In a bold move to promote an upcoming movie titled "
Hackers
," (this link was valid as of 9/1/95) MGM/UA has posted a Web site that points the way to potentially dangerous content and criminal activity.
A few clicks away from the movie-promo page reside listings of filched cred
it-card numbers, instructions for making homemade bombs, a recipe for LSD and guidelines for counterfeiting money with a laser printer.
EE Times
also learned from an FBI source that the site has been submitted to the bureau's National Computer Crime Squad for potential investigation.
Officially, MGM/UA says the site is purely for entertainment purposes. John Hegeman, vice president of marketing administration for the corporation, said the Web page began as a "teaser site" with a disclaimer saying that "we're not experts in hacking. We're not saying we are."
Hegeman said the company simply "asked people to open a dialogue--what are your favorite hacks or what are some hacks you've done in the past--using this just for background information to make our site a little more entertaining and interesting."
Intel, Hitachi to face off in PDA arena
By
Ron Wilson
FOLSOM, Calif. -- A showdown is coming this fall between Hitachi Ltd. and Intel Corp. over the Asian handheld-computer and organizer markets.
EE Times
has learned that Intel is set to free its long-caged Hummingbird low-power 486 CPU on Sept. 21. And sources have indicated that Hitachi's SH processor--already used in Amstrad's InfoPad handheld--is about to inherit a Windows 95-compatible operating system.
The competition springs from a market that has emerged much faster in Asia than in the United States. Asian makers of electronic organizers have been moving upscale from the relatively simple calendar and phone-book facilities used in the U.S. market. They're developing handhelds that, while retaining the familiar features, also can exchange data with desktop systems, work with multimedia data and function over wireless networks. But such handhelds will require a new generation of CPUs.
Originally, Hummingbird was devised to serve just this market, offering 486 speed and X
86 compatibility, according to Intel sources. To provide reasonable operating life from a small battery, the chip has aggressive power management and operates at less than 3.3 V. The standard operating voltage will be 2.5 V, said sources outside Intel.
However, the chip is not a highly integrated CPU/logic combination. Hummingbird includes little or no additional hardware beyond that on any other 486 CPU. That has led Intel to solicit assistance from core-logic and graphics-chip vendors to support the unique low-voltage interfaces on the device. Reportedly, a major Japanese builder of core-logic chips will provide a system controller, and an important second-tier graphics vendor will provide a low-voltage LCD controller.
TI patent award reversed
By
Brian Fuller
DALLAS -- Texas Instruments Inc. said last week that it will appeal a federal judge'
s ruling throwing out a $51.8 million award TI won in a packaging-patent case.
U.S. District Judge Barefoot Sanders threw out a jury's conclusion that Cypress Semiconductor Corp., LSI Logic Corp. and VLSI Technology Inc. had violated TI patents on plastic packaging.
The two patents in the case cover encapsulating integrated circuits by injecting fluid plastic through an aperture in the bottom half of a mold cavity containing the device. Commonly called bottom-gating, this is the packaging process most broadly used by the semiconductor industry, TI said.
Sanders, using a new case precedent giving judges more latitude over jury rulings in intellectual-property matters, said the jury did not fully understand the issues in the trial. The jury deliberated less than an hour before finding in May that the three companies had violated the TI encapsulating patents. VLSI was ordered to pay $19.4 million, Cypress $17.8 million and LSI Logic $14.6 million, but the jury gave no reason for the different sums. Anal
og Devices Inc. (Norwood, Mass.) and Integrated Device Technology Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) settled with TI before the case went to trial.
"TI has not pointed to any evidence in the record upon which a jury could find that those terminals (required for the function of the devices) could not be connected to leads, which is what must be established in order to find literal infringement under the court's definition," Sanders wrote in his ruling.
Motorola revamps its 68360 Quicc line
By
Loring Wirbel
AUSTIN, Texas -- Only a week after debuting the PowerPC-based MPC821 processor from its personal-portable-systems group, Motorola Inc. has used a similar core to revamp the entire 68360 Quicc (Quad Integrated Communications Controller) product line from its data-communications group, creating the MPC860 "PowerQuicc" family. Despite the similarities in
core architectures, Motorola has to use different wafer mask sets for all members of the MPC8XX families, sharing only a submicron CMOS process.
By adding serial communication controllers (SCC), Ethernet medium-access controllers (MAC) and high-level data-link controller (HDLC) channels to the 8XX architecture, Motorola has created a significantly different product family from the 821, incapable of sharing mask-layer design steps, said applications engineer Lynn Woods. The 860 product family will be aimed at existing users of the 68360 who need higher performance in modem/WAN access devices, internetworking hub/routers or similar high-end systems. "Since all members of the PowerPC embedded family carry the 800 label, it made sense to call a 68360 follow-on the 860," said marketing manager Trey Oprendek. "We like to think of it as an 860 done right."
The 860 shares with the 821 the use of dual RISC blocks: a PowerPC CPU core, and the communications processor module, or CPM, from the 68360, which is base
d on a hardwired RISC-like core to handle protocol processing and schedule interrupts on the SCCs. The CPM has 16 serial direct-memory-access controllers and a concurrent multiply-accumulate block, which allows the core to perform many digital-filtering functions traditionally handled in a dedicated DSP device.
National fires wireless push with ceramic tech
By
Ashok Bindra
and
Martin Gold
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- In a bid to capture the RF portion of the wireless-phone market, National Semiconductor Corp. has acquired ceramic-substrate technology and a manufacturing facility from Hughes Aircraft Co. With the technology and $8 million in funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arpa), National will develop highly integrated multilayer ceramic-substrate modules for digital-cordless and cellular phones.
Specifically, National will use Hughes' low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) technology to dramatically reduce the size and number of components at the front end of the phone.
The move comes as other semiconductor companies with DSP-baseband technology struggle to develop the RF expertise needed to offer complete chip sets.
Developing the RF portion looms as a key element of National's grand strategy to be among the major components vendors to the wireless world.
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