EET-i Top of the News
Week of September 25, 1995
- September 28, 1995
 Microware's David OS gets Apple ports
- DOS sees surge in embedded market
- AT&T lifts 'CAP' to video
- Japan's AKM creates its first U.S. chip arm
- Nichia develops 'pure' green LED
What's new(s) at EE Times-interactive
- September 27, 1995
- Labor squeeze has some product cycles slipping
- SEMI backs retraining for Valley EEs
- Harvard creates 'self-assembly' process for IC features
- Projection display offers true 3-D
- Fuzzy reasoning tak
es on tricky pattern recognition
- September 26, 1995
- Smart Storage's CD-R drives operate on a network
- Search engine aimed at CD-ROM developers
- MPEG finding its way into home PCs
- Flip-chip on flex focus
- A Virtuoso in IC layout
- Instruments target board faults
- September 25, 1995
- Taking on Intel, PC-processor makers report progress
- Prepare P6-based systems to dissipate up to 40 W, Intel advises
- Motorola girds for all-out assault on wireless business
- Despite skepticism, Davic group pushes interactive media ahead
- Seagate, Conner to merge
- Cyrix, focusing on M1, puts an end to 486 production
Other news sources on Techweb:
 Microware's David OS gets Apple ports
By
Junko Yoshida
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- In an attempt to build, rather than fragment, the yet-to-boom interactive-TV market in the United States, Apple Computer Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.) and Microware Systems Corp. (Des Moines, Iowa) unveiled plans this week to port Apple's QuickTime and QuickDraw to David 2.0, Microware's newly upgraded real-time operating system for interactive-TV set-top boxes.
The partners made the announcement here at Microware's David (Digital Audio/Video Interactive Decoder) Developers
' Conference.
Apple's work in porting QuickTime and QuickDraw to David 2.0 is under way and is scheduled for completion early next year.
Microware's newly released David 2.0 OS features a hardware-independent graphics API; MPEG-2 decoding; and support for multiple digital-network systems, including full-service broadband cable/telephone, satellite and multimedia-development systems.
Through the collaboration between Apple and Microware, "we are opening up a new deployment environment to a vast number of interactive-digital-content developers currently using Macintosh," said Rick Shriner, vice president of interactive media for Apple.
DOS sees surge in embedded market
By
Terry Costlow
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Propelled by the likes of giant IBM and lesser-known Phar Lap Software, DOS is the focus of a surprising surge into the embedded market.
IBM has unveiled a ROMable version of DOS as part of its plans to expand into the embedded market, and Phar Lap Software Inc. has moved into the real-time DOS market.
Both efforts could cut development times, by enabling engineers familiar with DOS from the PC world to use it in their embedded efforts. That is a big part of the reason that IBM's software group is pushing forward with DOS as part of a new focus on embedded systems. Another part of the decision by IBM to beef up its marketing and develop new products is that there is a growing understanding that the embedded market is far larger than the computer industry where DOS got its start.
"We are going to sell DOS 7 into the embedded market," said John Soyring, director of IBM's Personal Software Products Division (Austin, Texas)."We had been testing the waters, and we decided there was enough interest to go out and address that market. As part of that, we've developed two versions of a ROMable DOS 7."
AT&T lifts 'CAP' to video
By
Loring Wirbel
BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. -- AT&T Microelectronics next week will launch its Access family of ICs for switched digital-video markets, leveraging a design pact the company signed last year with BroadBand Technologies Inc. (Research Triangle Park, N.C.).
AT&T hopes to take advantage of an encoding technology it pioneered, called carrierless amplitude-modulation/phase-modulation (CAP), to take a lead in offering silicon for switched digital-video markets, said Gerry Pepenella, marketing manager for transmission and access products at AT&T.
CAP encoding has been chosen for a wide range of transmission systems, including Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) at 51 Mbits/second. The method has been officially sanctioned by groups ranging from Davic to the ATM Forum. AT&T uses it in chip-set solutions for high-bit-rate digital subscriber
lines (HDSL), asymmetric digital subscriber lines (ADSL) and switched digital-video.
Japan's AKM creates its first U.S. chip arm
By
Junko Yoshida
SAN JOSE, Calif -- Asahi Kasei Microsystems (AKM), is poised to expand its predominantly Japan-based sales and design/engineering activities into worldwide operations. Incorporated on Oct. 1, the company's U.S. sales office will operate as a new company called AKM Semiconductor Inc. (San Jose). The Japanese parent company is also opening up AKM Design Tek Inc. in San Diego, its first U.S.-based design center.
AKM, the chip division of Japan's $12 billion chemical giant, Asahi Chemical Industry Co. (Tokyo), has been quietly building its technology portfolio, design capability and CMOS fab capacity, to become Japan's premier vendor of mixed-signal ICs.
In fact, AKM has already become the world's sec
ond-largest silicon vendor for the cellular-phone market, according to the 1993 sales ranking data by VLSI Technology Research, a San Jose, Calif.-based marketing research firm. AKM is one of the few companies to clearly succeed as a silicon vendor in the big diversification trend that swept Japanese corporations in the 1980s.
Nichia develops 'pure' green LED
TOKYO -- Nichia Chemical Industries Ltd. (Anan, Tokushima) has developed a "pure" green light-emitting diode (LED) with a brightness level of 6 candela (cd).
"The LED will be bright enough to make a full-color display with red and blue LEDs," said a Nichia spokesman. It emits 525-nm-wavelength green light with 6-cd brightness when 20 mA of current is applied. Green LEDs now on the market emit about 555-nm yellowish-green light at about 100 mcd.
Sony Corp. also has reported development of a green LED--513.3-nm diode that emits 6.8-cd l
ight at 20 mA.
Labor squeeze has some product cycles slipping
By
Brian Fuller
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The the labor shortage in the electronics industry is so acute that product cycles are slipping here and there because of a lack of engineers.
While the problem is not widespread, anecdotal evidence is cropping up that on some projects, completion times are being pushed out while human-resource managers scramble to fill a team with a key engineer or two.
The setbacks have hit FPGA vendor QuickLogic Corp. at least twice so far. Vice president of computer-aided engineering John Birkner noted that since the semiconductor industry is doing so well, it's increasingly difficult to lure away engineers because of "golden handcuffs" that come in the form of soaring stock prices. Engineers usually lose their stock options when they leave a company.
SEMI backs retraining for Valley EEs
By
Robert Bellinger
In a week and a half, 40 unemployed and underemployed engineers and scientists--many of them from the defense and aerospace industries---begin a six-week "transitional education program" designed to prepare them for jobs at Silicon Valley semiconductor manufacturers.
Unlike some previous retraining programs, the Pilot Training Initiative steers applicants into an industry that is clamoring for qualified people and isn't too much of a stretch from what they were doing before. Engineers will be doing engineering, only it may be in fabs, instrumentation houses or the manufacturing side of semiconductor production rather than in aerospace plants.
The course was developed by Semiconductor Equipment & Materials International (SEMI) in response to a widening gap between supply and deman
d for engineers. It is estimated that there are 4,000 open requisitions in Silicon Valley. Yet "the industry currently has trouble attracting trained semiconductor science and engineering talent from other geographic areas because of high living costs," said SEMI's director of technology, Jay Pinson.
Harvard creates 'self-assembly' process for IC features
By
Chappell Brown
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Using a chemical technique called molecular self-assembly, researchers at Harvard University's department of physics have devised a complete lithographic system that could define features smaller than 100 nanometers (0.01 micron ) on silicon substrates. Working with a group at NIST's Atomic Physics Division (Gaithersburg, Md.), Harvard scientists have demonstrated an apparatus able to define features with that level of accuracy over an area of 2 square centim
eters.
Key to the technique is the ability of a class of molecules known as alkanethiolates to organize themselves into a patterned layer only one molecule thick. The molecular layer, deposited on a gold film only 20 nanometers thick that rests on a silicon substrate, plays the role of a resist that is less than 2 nanometers thick. As in conventional semiconductor lithography, exposure of the monolayer to a particle beam--in this case electrically neutral argon atoms--weakens it. Thus, an etchant is allowed to dissolve the gold film underneath. A solution of ferricyanide can penetrate the damaged monolayer and attack the gold film.
Projection display offers true 3-D
By Gail Robinson
GLENDALE, Calif. -- A recently patented display system is claimed to achieve true-stereo 3-D images without the need for visual aids, such as special glasses or helmets. Called 3DTV, the system uses convention
al optics and is built into a single display panel that, according to its designer, affords users a greater degree of freedom, allowing anyone to sit comfortably in front of a monitor and experience realistic moving images.
"We're working with technology that's off-the-shelf and pretty much available to anyone," said Stephen Hines, inventor and president of HinesLab Inc. "For example, we use a liquid-crystal display developed for projecting computer or video images on an overhead projector, and we make use of today's low-cost, high-quality video cameras."
Using the technology, Hines can produce multiple video images that are combined into stereoscopic arrays compatible with current video technology and displayed with a special monitor. The system enables a single user or several to view a 3-D scene on the monitor with a degree of what Hines calls look-around capability, reflecting the different camera or image-source angles.
Fuzzy reasoning takes on tricky pattern recognition
By
R. Colin Johnson
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- While fuzzy logic has found wide acceptance in control systems, the application of fuzzy techniques to pattern recognition has remained an illusive goal. A recently announced package from Kemp-Carraway Heart Institute, however, could represent a turning point for the latter technology. The company has brought fuzzy pattern recognition to a variety of areas, including image analysis, mineral analysis from X-ray diffraction spectra, psychiatric screening and risk analysis.
Called Flops, the $495 software is claimed to emulate the way humans reason by using a fuzzy rule-based system.
"Most Flops applications to date have been scientific or technical, but Flops is suitable for constructing reasoning systems in any field," said Kemp-Carraway senior scientist William Siler. "Fuzzy reasoning can handle the ambiguities and contradic
tions with which we are so often faced in human thought."
The company distinguishes fuzzy reasoning from fuzzy logic by emphasizing the software's dual serial/parallel architecture and graceful handling of uncertain values. "Fuzzy reasoning brings the same power to expert systems that fuzzy logic has brought to process control," said Siler.
Smart Storage's CD-R drives operate on a network
By
Rick Boyd-Merritt
ANDOVER, Mass. -- Providing a piece of the puzzle it hopes will help nudge Compact Disk-Recordable technology a step closer to the mainstream, Smart Storage has launched a new version of its software. SmartCD Archive 2.0 allows users to read or write to CD-R drives anywhere on a network.
The application will provide the necessary glue for a new generation of CD-R jukeboxes. These products hope to transform CD-R use from something han
dled by an archivist on a powerful CD-R-equipped workstation who distributes CDs to users with CD-ROM drives, to a reading and writing task that can be handled by anyone on a corporate LAN.
"To date, reading and recording CDs have been two discrete processes," said Gary Brach, president and co-founder of Smart Storage. "We have become the first company to offer integrated reader/writer software, opening a door to file- based access of CD-R data that's as easy as linking into any hard-disk drive on the network."
Search engine aimed at CD-ROM developers
By
Rick Boyd-Merritt
NEW YORK -- Startup CompassWare Development Inc. is prepping a text-retrieval search engine aimed at a growing market of CD-ROM title developers, content providers and on-line services. The MagnetSearch Engine has what the company hopes will be a unique set of features for
filtering through the flood of on-line or archived data.
Rather than employing a simple word-matching technique, MagnetSearch seeks out groups of related words based on a given query. It ranks the results of a search based on the number and proximity of related words in the retrieved text. It also supports indexing on-the-fly for use in searches of real-time news and data feeds.
The engine "learns from the user" in that it monitors what texts the user chooses and how long the user spends reading those texts. Based on that information, the engine adjusts the ranking it gives to various related words in future queries.
While many text-retrieval engines are aimed at end users, CompassWare is targeting the OEM market. "We think, over time, the choice of text-retrieval search engines will be invisible to the end user," said chief executive officer David Waxman.
MPEG finding its way into home PCs
by
Rick Boyd-Merritt
BURLINGAME, Calif. -- A developers conference here this week is driving home the message the message Compaq Computer Corp. made in mid-September when it launched the latest models of its Presario home computers: MPEG compression has come to the PC. S3 Corp., whose MPEG silicon was used in those Presarios, gave away software-developer kits for its MPEG silicon at the conference, which was cosponsored by Compaq and S3.
"We've already been working with ISVs [independent software vendors] for several months," said Mark Veena, director of consumer product marketing at Compaq. "We want to see if we can lead the industry in this area."
Compaq is bundling five MPEG titles with its new Presario systems, including an MPEG version of Microsoft's Encarta CD-ROM encyclopedia. But the Houston-based PC maker is hoping to drive the development of many more titles, particularly games and other interactive programs.
"My view is, I don't thi
nk people will use PCs to play MPEG movies," said Veena. "The value of MPEG comes with an interactive component. Today's MPEG titles don't show off the technology as well as future games titles will."
Flip-chip on flex focus
By
Ashok Bindra
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- The rising interest in flip-chip technology on flexible substrates was evident at the recent International Conference on Flex Circuits (Flexcon'95) here, which highlighted several papers on new processes and material compositions under development. Driven by the need for miniaturization and flexibility, manufacturers and R&D centers around the world are advancing the technology for a variety of applications.
Flex circuits are rapidly expanding into products, such as hearing aids, cameras, LCDs, disk drives, printers and smart cards, where form-factor constraints are severe, said Subas
h Khadpe, president of consulting firm Semiconductor Technology Center Inc. (STC; Neffs, Pa.). According to STC, the worldwide market for flex substrates is estimated at nearly $2 billion this year, and is projected to reach $3 billion by the year 1999.
While there are several benefits of flexible circuits, disadvantages exist as well. High-temperature soldering is a concern because of material sensibility. Researchers at Fraunhofer IZM in Berlin have devised an alternative to pastes and adhesives. The success of flip-chip on flex depends on the proper selection of materials, processes, equipment and the design, said Timothy Patterson, senior process development engineer at Smartflex Systems (Tustin, Calif.). Consequently, the company is readying a methodology based on eutectic solder bumps and convection reflow processes to flip-chip-attach ICs with perimeter pads as small as 0.002-inch (2 mils) diameter on center lines down to 0.004 inch (4 mils).
A Virtuoso in IC layout
By
Richard Goering
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- To bring some automation to handcrafted custom-IC design, Cadence Design Systems has announced Virtuoso Fastchip Design Solutions, a set of three IC-layout methodologies. Underlying those approaches is a new tool called Device Level Router (DLR), a redesigned version of Device Level Editor (DLE), and an enhanced version of Cadence's existing Layout Synthesis (LAS) tool.
All the tools are built on top of the Virtuoso Layout Editor, allowing users to drop back into handcrafted layout at any time. "The designer will continue to do anything he deems really critical by hand," said Willy Mason, Cadence Virtuoso product manager. "But for less critical things that may be a little more tedious, he can apply automation as he sees fit."
The new design methodologies are the Assisted Custom Layout flow, based on DLE and DLR; the Automated Custom L
ayout flow, based on LAS; and the Jumpstart flow, based on a combination of those three tools. The tools all have been tested in Cadence's Usability Lab, an environment at Cadence corporate headquarters that lets users check tools for ease-of-use.
Instruments target board faults
By
Stan Runyon
BELLINGHAM, Wash. -- Today's dense surface-mount printed-circuit boards pose one of the most difficult test challenges--specifically, detecting and locating flaws on boards.
Polar Instruments Inc. believes it has an economical and novel solution to the problem: two easy-to-use benchtop instruments.
The T1000A and T1500A hone in on faults at the component level by borrowing some test methods and features from Polar's high-end, automatic analog signature analyzers. Boards do not need to be powered up, nor do users need a detailed knowledge of the circuitry
under test.
Using a comprehensive suite of test ranges and functions, the benchtop units test boards component-by-component. The basic method applies a current-limited ac drive signal through a pair of probes, and collects an analog impedance signature (a V/I trace) that characterizes the in-circuit behavior of each component.
The technique is universal--it can be applied to all kinds of active and passive components--from resistors and capacitors to complex analog and digital devices. Also, because boards are not powered, the technique cannot damage any device under test.
Taking on Intel, PC-processor makers report progress
By
Rick Boyd-Merritt
A group of PC and processor makers quietly collaborating on strategies to compete with Intel Corp. are slowly moving ahead on three fronts. The big question facing the so-called Sundance group--whi
ch consists of Advanced Micro Devices, Cyrix, Compaq and IBM--is whether the diverse group can pull its membership into enough agreement to take significant actions.
The Sundance group hopes to publish by the end of the year an open specification for an x86 processor bus that would compete with the processor bus of the Intel Pentium Pro (formerly P6) bus. It is working on its own specification for extensions to the X86 instruction set for accelerating multimedia, that would be separate from those Intel will use in the P55C and future chips. And it is trying to agree on an X86 benchmarking standard other than Intel's iCOMP index.
All three agenda items seek to establish an open X86-based standard that would compete with a relatively proprietary one Intel is driving in its CPUs. Whether the group can reach any significant agreement, however, is a matter of debate. Its only accord to date has been on an open specification for a multiprocessor interrupt controller, called Open PIC.
Prepare P6-based systems to dissipate up to 40 W, Intel advises
By
Alexander Wolfe
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The P6 is one hot microprocessor, according to a confidential Intel Corp. document obtained by
EE Times
. In it, Intel advises engineers to design their P6-based systems to dissipate 35 W to 40 W--triple the 12.8-W maximum power dissipation specified for a 120-MHz Pentium.
A single P6 processor actually dissipates about 20 W, according to Lew Paceley, marketing director for the P6. The 35-to-40-W figure, he said, is intended to provide a margin for system upgrades. "To accommodate even higher clock speeds in the future, you need to overdesign what you have today," said Paceley.
Designers reached last week appeared divided on the meaning of the P6 power-dissipation specs. Many believed that the 20-W figure could be easily achieved with heat sinks and fans slight
ly bigger than those used for the Pentium. (The early 66-MHz Pentiums hit 16-W maximum.) But others warned that dissipating 35 to 40 W could be a big challenge--particularly in small-footprint desktop systems and in four-way multiprocessing servers.
"The people who are going to suffer are ones who've built a box and think they can just throw a P6 board into it," said an executive at a computer-systems house designing P6 machines.
Motorola girds for all-out assault on wireless business
By
Martin Gold
AUSTIN, Texas -- Motorola is going after wireless markets with a vengeance. Its Semiconductor Products Sector has put in place a major worldwide initiative to aggressively pursue the business.
The strategy involves developing new technologies that will enable the lower voltage levels, lower power consumption and the higher levels of integration that w
ill be required for wireless communications. A wide assortment of new digital signal processors and RF components are being developed. Motorola's BiCMOS and MOSAIC V bipolar processes, as well as new lateral DMOS processes, will be used for wireless applications. There will also be new versions of Motorola well-established 68HC11 microcontroller, which is being fine-tuned to handle call processing and user interfaces.
The program also involves assigning to Motorola Semiconductor operations in the U.S., Europe, Asia/Pacific and Japan responsibility to develop and market chip sets for the various cellular radio standards and digital cordless phones, one- and two-way paging units and, ultimately, solutions that implement the combination of voice terminals and personal digital assistants operating on cellular networks.
Despite skepticism, Davic group pushes interactive media ahead
By
George Leopold
and
Junko Yoshida
WASHINGTON -- Despite growing skepticism over the prospects for interactive media, experts who have worked closely with an international group forging multimedia specifications maintain it has clearly defined crucial specs for key interfaces among the server, delivery network and set-top needed to make interactive services a reality.
The head of the Digital Audio-Visual Council (Davic), which reached agreement during a five-day meeting in Hollywood recently on a draft spec, framed the issues facing interactive media during a briefing here last week. "The success of new multimedia services will depend on empowering entrepreneurs to develop applications which can be used interchangeably on a world-wide basis," said Davic president Leonardo Chiariglione. "The Davic specifications [are] the key to making this goal a reality."
Along with Davic's progress, interactive TV's true believers point to a seri
es of events as proof that reports of its imminent death are premature. Among them: Tele-TV, the phone company interactive TV alliance, is scheduled to announce a set-top vendor this week; PowerTV (Cupertino, Calif.) will introduce next week a new, critical graphics ASIC for set-tops based on the Malibu chip design developed at Kaleida, a joint venture between IBM and Apple; Microware Systems Corp. (Des Moines, Iowa) will unveil David 2.0 next week; Apple Computer Inc. will join Microware next week in announcing plans to port its Quick Time and Quick Draw to David 2.0. Quick Time and Quick Draw are key video/graphics features requested in Tele-TV's set-top order.
Seagate, Conner to merge
By
Terry Costlow
SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. -- In a move that could ripple through the disk- and tape-drive industries, Seagate Technology Inc. and Conner Peripherals la
st week announced a merger that will produce the world's largest disk-drive maker.
Though Conner (San Jose, Calif.) has been on the block, the Seagate part of the billion-dollar deal surprised many observers. Published reports had predicted Samsung, in a bid to become a player in disk drives, might buy the industry's third-largest vendor.
The Conner-Seagate combination keeps disk drives a predominantly U.S. industry--more than 90 percent of the world's drives are made domestically. Yet, the repercussions will be felt well beyond the disk-drive industry, where Seagate will hold more than one-third of the total market. Makers of heads, media and other components would be affected, while the tape-drive industry sees its second-largest vendor get new ownership.
Despite Conner's leadership in both disk and tape drives, most observers believe that Seagate is buying Conner mainly for its strength in disk media. Other large drive makers have focused on magnetoresistive heads, but Conner has pushed its platte
r technology as the way to achieve higher capacity.
Cyrix, focusing on M1, puts an end to 486 production
By
Rick Boyd-Merritt
and
Brian Fuller
RICHARDSON, Texas -- With the M1 slated for launch by early next month, Cyrix is making a bold move to transition completely out of 486-class designs and position itself as a performance and technology leader. Much of the success of that plan, however, could hinge on how fast the company ramps production of its 5X86.
Cyrix, located here, stopped all new 486 wafer starts at IBM in May and is "winding it down as quickly as we can" at its second foundry, SGS-Thomson (Carrollton, Texas), said Jim Chapman, senior vice president of marketing for Cyrix, in an interview last week.
"This is classic end-of-life-cycle inventory pipeline," Chapman said. "The desire of end
users to buy this product is waning, and there are six 486 suppliers in the marketplace. That's a scenario for severe price competition."
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