EET-i Top of the News

Week of October 9, 1995

October 12, 1995

DOD spending looks stable

Sony joins MPEG-1 fray

Simulation for Windows NT

Europe looks into home-grown EDA

Single-chip color camera for 1 996

Spea, Philips in joint 3-D venture
What's new(s) at EE Times-interactive

October 11, 1995

Industry complains of shortages while laying off 300K

Comsat pioneers win Draper Prize

Circuit density tripped up by wires

Novel TVS structure aims at 3-V ICs

Applied Micro expands into software testing

October 10, 1995

Intel drives 4- and 8-Mbit flash down to 2.7 volts

Xilinx tweaks XC-3100 for speed

VLSI Tech offers controller IC for serial infrared

Mentor adds VHD, Verilog simulation to mixed-signal EDA

IPC defines bare-board acceptability

New twist on soldering: using diode lasers

Speech system goes mobile

October 9, 1995

Three multimedia processors to bow

Computer, telecom providers converge on Geneva

The buzz at Microprocessor Forum will be about VLIW

Need a T-shirt? Look no further

EDA vendors find useability issues are wor th their attention

'BeBox' a lulu? Maybe

Static mars U.S. digital-radio program

DOD spending looks stable

By George Leopold

WASHINGTON -- U.S. defense-electronics spending is expected to hold its own over the next decade despite declining military budgets, according to an industry forecast released this week by the Electronic Industries Association.

In its annual survey of military and other government electronics spending, the EIA concludes that the electronics segment of the Pentagon budget will remain stable through 2005, at about $44.5 billion annually in consta nt fiscal 1996 dollars. The total represents about 18 percent of the total 1996 military budget, increasing to 20 percent by 2005.

Overall military spending, according to the report, will fall from $260 billion this year to $214 billion in 2005. Earlier predictions that military spending would rebound strongly under a Republican-controlled Congress have apparently been tempered by congressional efforts to achieve a balanced budget over the next seven years.

Sony joins MPEG-1 fray

By Junko Yoshida

MONTVALE, N.J. -- Sony Electronics has grabbed a seat on the MPEG-encoding bandwagon by rolling out its first real-time MPEG-1 encoder system.

The system, "targeted at the highest quality MPEG-1 video," uses Inmos Ltd.'s Transputer as an encoding engine and Sony's own custom chip set for MPEG-1 audio/video decoding, said Christopher Tsai, senior pr oduct manager of video imaging systems.

More precisely, the Transputer used in the system coordinates and synchronizes parallel operations in encoding, particularly in the area of quantization, motion estimation and motion compensation.

Designated RTE-3000, the system is a standalone 19-inch rackmountable encoding unit that is connected to a PC that allows it to set encoding parameters and control operations. Sony has developed Windows-based encoder-control software, called Encoding Factory Software.

Simulation for Windows NT

By Richard Goering

BEAVERTON, Ore. -- In a significant EDA vendor endorsement of Windows NT, Synopsys' Logic Modeling Group has announced its first simulation model support for that platform. The initial support is for the VeriBest Verilog simulator from Intergraph Electronics (Huntsville, Ala.).

Logic Modeling's Sma rtModel and SourceModel libraries, and its ModelSource hardware models, are all available for the Windows NT version of VeriBest. Since Logic Modeling is the primary supplier of third-party simulation models, its endorsement of Windows NT makes it easier for Unix-based vendors to move to that platform.

"We're a vendor-independent neutral supplier, so we try to cover all the platforms that our simulator partners cover," said Dave Hardman, general manager for Logic Modeling's Smartmodels division. "There's been a lot of activity in porting EDA tools to [Windows NT], and we've had more than a few vendors approach us on this."

HP enters handheld organizer market

By Junko Yoshida

Palo Alto, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co. will take its first stab at the consumer handheld-organizer market today, unveiling a handheld unit that spurns the proprietary operating-system approach favored by most competitors in favor of Geoworks' open Geos OS. The first HP unit to offer pen as well as keyboard input, the OmniGo 100 represents one tine of a three-pronged handheld-market strategy that also embraces PC companion devices and personal communicators.

Scheduled for worldwide launch Nov. 1 at an estimated street price of $349, the 11.6-ounce OmniGo is designed for physical flexibility, employing a 360ý rotating hinge that allows the user to fold the unit and a screen that can be configured for either horizontal or vertical display. When folded, the device is a pen-input, vertically configured notepad; unfolded, it's an organizer with a familiar keyboard and horizontal screen.

Europe looks into home-grown EDA

By Peter Clarke

MUNICH, Germany -- Looking to promote the use of locally developed design tools, European systems, semiconductor and EDA companies are discussing the creation of a company to own the tools and keep them European.

The motivation is the s trategic nature of high-level design tools and libraries, which are becoming more significant to competitiveness in the electronic-systems business. European executives are also fed up with seeing home-grown EDA startups being bought by the U.S. market leaders.

Currently, the discussion is taking place mainly in Germany, focusing on a possible national research program called Smart System Engineering (SSE). This is being proposed as a platform to create excellence in electronic-system-design-automation tools. But potential partners are trying to make the case for SSE to be a European collaboration conducted under a follow-on program to the Joint European Submicron Semiconductor Initiative (Jessi), which ends in 1996.

Single-chip color camera for 1996

EDINBURGH, Scotland -- VLSI Vision Limited (VVL) has sent samples to key customers of prototypes of a single-chip color camera and is on course t o have production quantities available by April 1996. The five-year-old company has been working on a color chip for almost two years to complement its range of mono-imaging ICs and compact cameras.

Roy Warrender, commercial director at VVL's holding company, Vision Group plc, said he could not name customers at this time, but that quantity sales negotiations had started.

"The demand from the market is for a color video-conferencing camera costing under $100. We're confident we can achieve that," he said. The initial color chip is likely to provide a resolution of about 320 to 400 lines, which compares with VVL's mono-camera chips that extend up to 640-line resolution.

Spea, Philips in joint 3-D venture

STARNBERG, Germany -- Spea Software AG and Philips Semiconductors (Eindhoven, Netherlands) have formed a joint venture--SP3D Chip Design GmbH (SP3D)--to develop 3-D graphics and multimedia ICs. The chips are for multimedia PCs and game consoles. Philips will own 50.5 percent of the outfit, which is based in Starnberg.

Some 18 engineers have been transferred to SP3D from Spea, a manufacturer of graphics add-in cards for the PC. No Philips employees have been transferred to the SP3D payroll.

The joint venture's first product, a 3-D graphics-acceleration IC, will initially be produced using Philips's 0.5-micron CMOS process. Managing director Klaus Lehner said that this was the result of the Spea program now called Shark, internally.

First samples are due to be available at the beginning of 1996. Philips Semiconductors will brand and sell all the chips developed by SP3D.

Industry complains of shortages while laying off 300K

By Robert Bellinger

A survey of employers in 18 cities finds "a shortage of skilled workers wit h technical and sales expertise and engineering and information-systems backgrounds."

The survey, by outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas, also uncovered perceptions of "a shortage of employees with a good work ethic" and "a shortage of workers willing to relocate to where the jobs have moved, confirmed by the new Census Bureau data showing fewer Americans moving than at any time in 45 years."

The word "shortage" irks EEs. Respondents to the 1995 EE Times "Salary & Opinion Survey" overwhelmingly denied there's a shortage. And IEEE-USA maintains that while are spot shortages, many engineers are available to fill positions, though those engineers may come from neighboring industries or backgrounds.

And even as employers cry shortage, 1995 announcements of layoffs of all types of workers passed the 300,000 mark last month, according to the Challenger Employment Report.

On average, however, corporate human-resource executives gave the hiring outlook a thumbs up, rating it at 82 out of 100.

Comsat pioneers win Draper Prize

WASHINGTON -- Two engineers will share the $400,000 Charles Stark Draper Prize for their pioneering work in developing the communication satellite.

John R. Pierce, 85, a retired EE from AT&T Bell Labs, and Harold A. Rosen, 69, an aerospace engineer from Hughes Aircraft, were called "the fathers of the communication satellite" by science-fiction writer and aerospace engineer Arthur C. Clarke, who is credited with dreaming up the concept in a 1945 article titled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays." "They designed, developed and produced it," said Clarke, "making real that which I and others thought only to write and dream about."

Circuit density tripped up by wires

By Chappell Brown

WASHINGTON -- T he electronics industry has become accustomed to the smooth scaling of circuit feature sizes. Smaller transistors run faster, use less power and take up less critical chip space. But one circuit component--the wires linking the transistors--won't scale as easily, and the resulting interconnect crunch threatens to inflict a severe limit on circuit density.

A glimpse of new strategies for heading off an interconnect crisis will be revealed here in early December at the upcoming International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM). Session papers from Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Siemens A.G. (Munich), IBM Corp. and Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan) will describe potential solutions being explored at major corporate research labs.

The most radical solution will be posed by Siemens, whose researchers will suggest that a truly three-dimensional circuit technology is the only long-term solution.

As revealed in the session papers, highly dense interconnect will require new metal formulations, better dielectr ics and, possibly, a rethinking of circuit design and layout.

Novel TVS structure aims at 3-V ICs

By Gail Robinson

NEWBURY PARK, Calif. -- Using a new four-level device structure, engineers at Semtech Corp., here, have designed a punch-through transient voltage suppressor (TVS) that protects 3-V circuits connected to power and transmission lines. Designed primarily to protect against electrostatic discharge (ESD), the device offers performance superior to that of conventional reversed p-n diode TVS products, the company said. That includes operating voltages down to 2.8 V, two orders-of-magnitude lower leakage current, one order-of-magnitude lower capacitance, and clamping voltages below 5 V.

Called the SLV series, the device specifically targets the industry move toward the use of low-voltage, submicron CMOS ICs. "Up to now, devices were fairly rugged and the structures involved in the h igher-voltage technologies lent themselves to building on-board protection," said Jeff Pohlman, operations manager for TVS products. "But it's getting harder to build protection with a common process for submicron geometries and angstrom-level gate-oxide thicknesses. Standard device structures no longer satisfactorily protect these parts because they operate at such low voltages."

Applied Micro expands into software testing

REDMOND, Wash. -- Applied Microsystems Corp. is expanding into software testing, hoping that the embedded systems market has a crying need for software-verification tools. The maker of in-circuit emulators has set up a new division and rolled out a program called CodeTest, which is a suite of software tools.

The company feels that most software for embedded systems undergoes mainly cursory testing, with few tools available.

"In the tools business, all the emphasis ha s been on coding and debugging tools," said Caine O'Brien, director of the test division at Applied Microsystems. "People spend an equal amount of time testing code. In the embedded world, there are no tools available for testing software. In the Unix and desktop PC market, software testing has grown to a $100 million business over the past two or three years. I feel that's starting to happen in embedded."

The problem begins at the unit level, where segments of a program are written by a small team. After it is coded and debugged, the unit's software is tested--"often very informally," O'Brien said. "There's no acceptable criterion as to what people mean when they say code works. Often, it's like testing a car by driving it a few hundred miles but never putting it in reverse to see if it works doing anything but going forward."

Intel drives 4- and 8-Mbit flash down to 2.7 volts

By Brian Fuller

FOLSOM, Calif. -- Intel Corp. next week will drive low voltage to new densities in flash memory, introducing 2.7-V versions of 4- and 8-Mbit parts.

It's the first time Intel has offered a 2.7-V device at 4 Mbits and the first time the industry has seen 2.7 V at 8 Mbits, said Bruce McCormick, who heads Intel's flash marketing operations.

"This is a key milestone for several handheld markets," McCormick said. "They've been using 3.3-V devices for a while now, and they've been asking us to take it down farther. This helps battery life."

The 28F800CE and 28F400CE boot-block devices are meant largely to answer the call of mobile-phone designers who want longer talk time, standby time and extended battery life, according to McCormick. They also want to keep their manufacturing lines humming with cell phones that don't have to be redesigned to fit a new spec or communications protocol--just updated in flash.

Xilinx tweaks XC-3100 for speed

By Brian Fuller

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- FPGA market leader Xilinx Inc., which reportedly ran into low-speed results on some devices after the PREP benchmarks were introduced, has redesigned its XC3100A family to optimize it for speed.

The tweak, the result of work between Xilinx and its foundry partners, employs a triple-layer metal, 0.6-micron process rather than the double-metal, 0.8-micron process of the earlier XC3100 family.

The XC3100A-1 and the XC-3100A-09 represent new speed grades and range from 1,000 to 7,500 usable gates. The XC-3100A-9, a re-laid-out version of the XC3100A-2, offers pin-to-pin delays of 6 ns and logic-block delays of 1.4 ns. It runs a 16-bit Johnson counter at 320 MHz, an 8-bit accumulator at 133 MHz and a data path at 335 MHz, said Chuck Fox, vice president for product marketing at Xilinx.

VLSI Tech offers controller IC for serial infrared

By Loring Wirbel

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- VLSI Technology Inc. has become the first member of the Infrared Data Association (IrDA) to offer merchant controller silicon for serial infrared links. VLSI recently added two additional firsts to its early lead in standard IrDA products: One controller will meet the newest IrDA specs, which extend data throughput to 4 Mbits/second, and VLSI's second-generation controller also will feature an embedded Peripheral Component Interconnect bus interface.

The simpler integrated circuit was based on an ASIC program VLSI performed for another IrDA member, which is being offered immediately in high-volume quantities.

The VCS94550 is a first-generation device meeting the original 114-kbit/s spec of IrDA as well as a midrange 1.15-Mbit/s spec, used largely by IBM. Joe Barta, mobile-communication product-line manage r in VLSI's Tempe, Ariz., operation, said that this device will be used as a vehicle for quick time-to-market for laptop developers with immediate serial-IR needs.

Mentor adds VHD, Verilog simulation to mixed-signal EDA

By Richard Goering

WILSONVILLE, Ore. -- Mentor Graphics Corp. has expanded its mixed-signal offerings with Continuum-QuickHDL, which adds VHDL and Verilog simulation to Continuum, an existing mixed-signal environment. Continuum includes the gate-level QuickSim II and the analog AccuSim II simulators, and optionally includes HDL-A, an analog language based on VHDL.

John Ott, marketing manager for analog and mixed-signal, said the new environment is the first to combine digital gate-level, VHDL and Verilog simulation with analog simulation and an analog HDL. Ott said that Continuum-QuickHDL is a significant part of Mentor's new "sys tems-on-silicon" initiative.

"What we really want to push here is a top-down methodology for mixed-signal design," he said. "We think there will be wide applications--from the system designer who wants to model a whole system to an ASIC designer coming to grips with mixed-signal issues."

IPC defines bare-board acceptability

NORTHBROOK, Ill. -- A document from the Institute for Packaging and Interconnecting Electronic Circuits (IPC) will play a major role in determining the look that boards will sport over the next few years. The specification, Acceptability of Printed Boards, defines the characteristics of an acceptable bare board.

The IPC-A-600E publication provides details and color photographs for three classes of boards: preferred, acceptable and rejectable. Within those categories, it examines plated through-holes, surface plating, solder coating, base materials, etching, conductors, mec hanical processes, flexible boards and multilayer boards. It also looks at flat cable and other common features on an unpopulated circuit board.

The specification sells for $80, with IPC members getting a 50- percent discount. For further information, call (708) 509-9700.

New twist on soldering: using diode lasers

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The Boston Laboratory of Panasonic Technologies Inc. has devised an alternative method for soldering special components to the circuit board, using a semiconductor diode laser to melt the solder. The company will provide technical details at the International Electronics Manufacturing Technology symposium in Austin, Texas, next week, but won't be introducing a formal product for some time.

Panasonic plans to work with one or two key customers to finalize a production system. The laser system will provide better positioning, longer lifetimes and reduced size, acco rding to the company.

Currently, parts such as connectors and other heat-sensitive components that can't be run through traditional soldering systems are attached using hot-bar soldering or non-contact soldering systems that use Xenon lamps to melt the solder. A spokesman noted that the laser will have much longer lifetime than a lamp-based system.

Speech system goes mobile

BOULDER, Colo. -- Speech Systems Inc. here is taking its voice-recognition software on the road for mobile users. The company is integrating its speaker-independent, continuous-speech recognizer with the Multimedia PC PCMCIA sound card of DSP Solutions Inc. (Palo Alto, Calif.). The pair also plan versions of the product for the embedded marketplace.

The Phonetic Engine 1000 is a Type II PCMCIA card using the TMS 320 C50 DSP of Texas Instruments. The DSP handles basic PC audio functions, such as 16-bit stereo record and p layback. It is compatible with the PC audio functions of Creative Labs' SoundBlaster and Microsoft's Windows Sound System.

The PE 1000 sports two jacks, one for microphone audio input and one for audio output. The card comes with Speech Systems' Runtime System (RTS) software for real-time voice recognition and a noise-canceling microphone. The on-board DSP converts incoming voice signals to speaker-independent phonetic codes used by the voice-recognition engine.

Three multimedia processors to bow

By Junko Yoshida and Brian Fuller

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Departing radically from the fixed-function silicon widely used for multimedia systems, MicroUnity (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Chromatic Research Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) and Philips Semiconductors (Sunnyvale, Calif.) are each introducing unique multimedia processors, designed for high-bandwidth multimedia applications. The three media processors, although often generalized as "multimedia accelerators," embody very different design philosophies, architectures and marketing strategies.

All three companies will discuss technical details of their own processors at the Microprocessor Forum here this week. An informal "shootout" over the merits of the three processors will also take place before a panel of architects from Chromatic, Philips and MicroUnity.

MicroUnity founder John Moussouris dribbled out some information last year about his Broadband Media Processor but has spent the last year refining it and its process to address cost, applications and business issues.

What was described last year as a dedicated, gigahertz-level processor implemented in BiCMOS has evolved into a general-purpose MPU that can be built in CMOS and scaled from the simplest RF front end to a thousand-CPU systems operating 64-bit Unix code, Moussouris said.

"This is not yet another glor ified DSP or VLIW multimedia engine. It's a general-purpose architecture," Moussouris said. "The reason it needs to be general-purpose architecture is that as the transition is made from narrow to broadband, it's necessary to have a processor that can handle millions of symbols per second in broadband communications but which is scaleable up to thousands of devices running 64-bit Unix that are necessary to handle a community of broadband users."

Computer, telecom providers converge on Geneva

By Peter Clarke

GENEVA -- Although the declared theme of Telecom 95 was "Connect," there was plenty of evidence at this exhibition of the other C word: convergence. As convergence of the computing and telephone markets changes the commercial terrain, new players and partnerships are emerging.

For example, Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, Wash.) and Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.), leading lights of desktop computing, had booths at the quadrennial Telecom event for the first time.

Operating system vendors also were in attendance, touting new strategies of modular real-time kernel services and directory services. Novell Inc. (Provo, Utah), although not showing at a booth of its own, was pushing embedded telephony OS services at AT&T Co.'s site. Chorus Systems SA (Paris) was touting new offerings of OS services through its new partner, SCO Inc. (formerly Santa Cruz Operation, Santa Cruz, Calif.).

Representatives of Intel and Microsoft expressed similar strategies for extending their product offerings to the globally distributed telecommunications-computing network that is now emerging.

In essence, the companies will move up from the leaf-nodes of that network, PCs connected through modems, to offer solutions in partnership with the next layer in the food chain, the telecom service providers. But they also want to work with the layer above, the equipment bui lders, to ensure the compatibility of the telecom infrastructure with the products they provide for end users.

The buzz at Microprocessor Forum will be about VLIW

By Alexander Wolfe

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Even as chip designers trumpet the hottest superscalar CPUs at this week's Microprocessor Forum here, the savviest among them are seeking alternative architectural techniques to apply to next-generation designs. The reason: superscalar processors have become crushingly complex, bursting with more and more pipelines and caches aimed at revving performance to the red line.

That's why a new way to build microprocessors is emerging in the form of VLIW--very long instruction word--architectures. The hallmark of VLIW, according to its proponents, is simplicity. A VLIW chip typically has numerous execution units, laid out in a neat grid, and runs multiple ins tructions on each clock cycle. VLIW also requires smart compiler software to schedule those instructions.

The first rumblings of a tilt toward VLIW are already being heard. At the Microprocessor Forum, papers will be presented on two processors that incorporate VLIW concepts--Philips' TriMedia and Chromatic's MPact Media Engine.

Need a T-shirt? Look no further

By Larry Lange

BERKELEY, Calif. -- Been there. Done it. Got the T-shirt.

The right to say that is the inducement being dangled by Community Connexion, a privacy server and Internet Service Provider--and T-shirt supplier--in Berkeley, Calif., looking to garner publicity on the back of the already beleaguered Netscape Communications Corp. Community's Internet World Wide Web site (http://www.c2.org/hacknetscape) garishly announces this "event" while including an in-depth technical history of Ne tscape's recent encryption hacks and specific information on how to further pursue this area of hacking.

As the promotion for the shirt puts it, "Hack Netscape and win a T-shirt! Yes! Expose security flaws in the most widely used commercial WWW software and you too can have your very own limited edition T-shirt! [These are] awarded only to people who have exposed security holes in Netscape Internet products or managed widely publicized Netscape cracking events."

EDA vendors find useability issues are worth their attention

By Richard Goering

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- EDA software has a well-deserved reputation for being difficult to use. But leading EDA vendors are trying to change that image with a new emphasis on what they call usability, along with software development practices that promise a new wave of easy-to-use software.

The usability quest i s perhaps most formalized at Cadence Design Systems (San Jose, Calif.), which has a dedicated staff of "usability engineers" and a high-tech usability lab where customers are observed as they test prototypes of new software. Usability initiatives and standards are also in place at such vendors as Mentor Graphics, Viewlogic, Intergraph Electronics and Orcad.

This new focus is a key shift in the EDA industry. "In the 1980s, the early adopters were willing to take raw software to get the job done, and they developed programming expertise," noted Marcelle Bona, usability engineer at Cadence's IC design group. "But today designers don't have the time to learn overly complex tools, and they don't want to become computer programmers any more."

'BeBox' a lulu? Maybe

By Junko Yoshida

MENLO PARK, Calif. -- Be Inc., a startup run by former Apple Computer exec utive Jean-Louis Gassýe, last week unwrapped BeBox--a real-time, multiprocessing computer that features two PowerPC603 processors running at 66 MHz.

The company is emphasizing both the software and multiprocessing capability of the MPU. "Older systems carry too much baggage and can't effectively incorporate innovations,"said Gassýe in a statement.

BeBox provides pre-emptive multitasking, an integrated database and a range of expansion and I/O options, including three expansion slots on a PCI bus for high-speed add-on cards.

Pre-emptive multitasking is handled by two PowerPC chips in the first-generation BeBox, but future versions will operate on up to eight PowerPCs. The system supports up to eight 77-pin SIMMs and can accommodate up to 256 Mbytes with 32-Mbyte SIMMs.

On top of its proprietary kernel is a graphics server that delivers continuously updated windows, a database server that supports live queries of collections of data and a digital media tool kit that manipulates real-time audio/vide o data streams.

Static mars U.S. digital-radio program

By George Leopold

ARLINGTON, Va. -- A testing program designed to select a U.S. digital-radio service has hit a snag as proponents of several candidate systems raise objections about procedures.

USA Digital Radio (Chicago), which is proposing two versions of an in-band, on-channel system, maintains that the Rayleigh fading model used to simulate multipath interference at FM frequencies is unrealistically harsh, based on field conditions it assumed would be encountered by digital-audio- radio (DAR) systems.

The protest has prompted testing officials to determine the validity of USA Digital's claims and whether they need to retest the seven proposed DAR systems. Retesting would further delay adoption of a U.S. service that has already been pushed back to the first half of 1996.

"It's a legi timate concern,"conceded Ralph Justus, director of engineering for the Electronic Industries Association's (EIA) consumer group.

With European digital-radio trials under way , the industry groups are aiming for speedy adoption of a U.S. service with CD-quality sound, immunity to multipath and other interference, no "objectionable"interference to other services, low transmission costs, low receiver complexity and cost, additional data capacity and threshold degradation of service with minimum artifacts.

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