EET-i Top of the News
Week of 10/23/95
- 10/27/95
 Dig it: GopherSpace VR burrows into the Internet
- Americans back electronics R&D, survey says
- Application-specific MCU core in works
- T.120 gets the video call
- MCI, partners define video-phone set-top box
- National's new division adds core logic, multimedia chips
What's new(s) at EE Times-interactive
- 10/26/95
- Pricey palmtop prepped by IBM
- Mobile Pentium revs to 120 MHz
- Cellular companies license TCSI's speech synthesis
- HP drives tape technology for servers and PCs
- Livingston raises complete ISDN family
- IMS tester analyzes
critical timing of submicron ICs
- Thick film gets role in 1.5-inch deep TVs
- 10/25/95
- NexGen alters 686 pinout
- SGRAM speeds 3-D engine
- Transistor offers smooth signal attenuation
- Hot plate served for detecting gas
- Is cognition really compression?
- 10/24/95
- Mobile Pentium revs to 120 MHz
- Multilevel inductors have high Q factor
- Large field emitter shows record current
- 10/23/95
- AT&T strides into system-level chip business
- The next big PC battle: clustering interconnects
- DSP EDA tool houses to show major upgrades
- Startup claims it can store multiple bits in one DRAM cell
- Wanted: MPEG test tools
- Intel founds group for Internet TV
- Intergraph starts P6 graphics push
 Dig it: GopherSpace VR burrows into the Internet
By R. Colin Johnson
MINNEAPOLIS -- Virtual reality on the Internet was first conceived on the Gopher service, not--as one might expect--on the more highly publicized World Wide Web. Recently, Gopher leapfrogged the Web again, this time on the server side of virtual-reality rendering. GopherCluster, available now, automatically creates navigable 3-D scenes as the result of database searches.
Three-dimensional cyberspace, called GopherSpace, is ready to be viewed today on any of the thousands of existing Gopher databases. All that users must do is download the free virtual-reality browser called GopherVR from: ftp:
//boombox.micro.umn.edu/pub/gopher.
The Gopher development group's latest contribution to VR on the Net is GopherCluster. It installs on the server side of the Net to create 3-D scenes for GopherVR on-the-fly, allowing users to more easily navigate large collections of documents. System administrators can download GopherCluster for free from: ftp://boombox.micro.umn.edu/pub/gopher/Unix/GopherCluster.
"GopherCluster provides more information about search results than is possible in traditional relevance-ranked searches," said gopher-master Paul Lindner from the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis (lindner@boombox.micro.umn.edu).
Americans back electronics R&D, survey says
By Robert Bellinger
WASHINGTON -- "Two out of three Americans think the U.S. government should increase its spending for R&D in advanced electronics and computer technologies," according to a new surve
y from IEEE.
The study of 1,020 randomly selected people across the United States also finds:
-- 62 percent think Americans are "extremely" dependent on technology at their workplaces.
-- Only 27 percent believe that the U.S. leadership in technology is increasing vs. 31 percent who think it's "slipping."
-- And 46 percent predict that Japan will be the world's technology leader in 10 years.
The support of the public for a boost in R&D spending is seen as a plus by IEEE president James T. Cain.
"At a time when technology funding continues to be attacked in Congress," said Cain, "it's encouraging that the public perceives a need for additional support."
Survey respondents expressed faith that technology in health and medical care and education "could improve the quality of their life in the next 10 years."
Application-specific MCU core in works
By Peter Clarke
DUISBERG, Germany -- An 8-bit microcontroller core intended to implement C language has reached working silicon. The design is from the Institute of Microelectronics Circuits and Systems (IMS), part of Germany's national Fraunhofer research network.
But the Institute, based at the university here, is suffering a delay on completing the C compiler for the device, called T2. When that is available, probably early in 1996, the institute will be able to perform benchmark tests and seek licensees for its approach. The design is synthesized from an instruction-set definition.
The T2 is intended as the first example of a class of processors IMS calls application-specific instruction processors, or ASIP. IMS has developed a design system that it claims will allow a rapid semiautomatic generation of such application-specific processors based on the application code they are intended to run. By deriving the design of a RISC microcontroller that way, said IMS officials, performance and code efficiency in memo
ry can be improved over standard devices, using less silicon. A further benefit is that where adequate performance can be achieved on a conventional microcontroller, an ASIP should be able to achieve it at a lower clock frequency, providing a further power saving and reducing risks of electromagnetic interference.
T.120 gets the video call
By Loring Wirbel
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- The data-sharing functions spelled out in the International Telecommunications Union's T.120 standard, commonly known as "whiteboard" features, are becoming a necessary adjunct to videoconferencing hardware. At the Telecon conference here, video-processing semiconductor specialist Integrated Information Technology Inc. (IIT; Santa Clara, Calif.) signed an agreement with a T.120 pioneer, DataBeam Corp. (Lexington, Ky.) to embed DataBeam's T.120 software in IIT's multimedia processors.
Also at the show, VideoServer I
nc. (Lexington, Mass.) demonstrated one of the first servers that simultaneously supports T.120 data sharing and H.320 videoconferencing. VideoServer is a developer of multipoint conferencing units, allowing multiple video codecs to be connected in a group conference. The new server, called Multimedia 440, represents an expansion of T.120 services into a multipoint architecture.
T.120 was defined as a protocol suite that allows data to be shared across computing platforms on a LAN or telephone link, regardless of the type of computer or operating system used.
MCI, partners define video-phone set-top box
By Loring Wirbel and Junko Yoshida
WASHINGTON -- MCI Telecommunications Corp. is turning the traditional model of television set-top-box deployment upside-down. With the help of chip, software and manufacturing partners, MCI will launch next summer a VideoPhone whose set-top box will s
erve the sole function of setting up video-phone calls over analog lines using the International Telecommunications Union's H.324 conferencing standard.
Traditionally, interexchange and local-exchange carriers have used set-top boxes to provide larger channel capacity and video-on-demand services, first in the analog domain, then digitally, as cable TV networks are upgraded. In this model, video telephony is added in the second- or third-generation box. Such a model requires consumer trials, and is contingent on finding the right mix of services.
MCI has elected to make analog telephony its first set-top-box service. Later, the VideoPhone architecture could be expanded to support interactive TV services.
An MCI spokesman said the MCI product "doesn't require service trials, because its purpose is obvious. We will sell this retail through our MCI Connections stores, as well as offer it in bundling and lease-to-own options." The $1,300 purchase price "isn't much beyond the analog video-phones th
at currently use small LCD screens, but the picture quality will be much, much better," he said.
National's new division adds core logic, multimedia chips
By Ron Wilson
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Finding itself in the unique position of having excess CMOS capacity, National Semiconductor has devised a strategy: attack the powerful but capacity-strapped silicon vendors that serve the personal-computer industry. Accordingly, National has set up a Personal Systems Division, chartered to take the aging $2.3 billion semiconductor house into core logic, multimedia chips, bus interfaces and peripheral controllers.
The new division will lever National's existing customer relationships in Super I/O chips, network adapters and mixed-signal devices, but its most powerful weapon may be PC vendors' increasing frustration with late deliveries from industry powerhouses such as Cirrus Logic.
The new d
ivision will fire shots at the PC market across an astonishingly broad front. Starting with existing National product lines, licensing, joint-venturing and when necessary acquiring technology outright, Personal Systems will attempt to simultaneously introduce core logic, multimedia and bus-controller products. At the same time, the division will be charged with expanding its share of the networking, PC bus and mass-storage markets by driving a set of emerging technologies.
Pricey palmtop prepped by IBM
By David Lammers
TOKYO -- On one level, IBM Japan's Palm Top PC 110 is a pint-sized Windows machine. But like a set of nested Russian dolls, the new handheld computer contains many layers of functionality, packed into a small case.
Still, despite projections of an order backlog, it's hard to imagine that many users here will shell out nearly $3,000 for the system.
The Palm Top is
more box-shaped, slightly thicker than the original prototype. One reason is that many people type on a small computer with their thumbs, grasping the sides of the system and thumbing in the characters. Also, the system is deep enough to hold the type of readily available lithium-ion battery packs that are used in various camcorders in Japan. The battery provides 3 hours of operation.
The Palm Top is light: The basic system--minus a drive or flash card--is slightly more than 600 grams, including the battery. IBM engineers used duralumin--a composite of magnesium and aluminum--for the first time to make a case that is thin, light, strong and scratch-resistant. The display is a color passive matrix screen measuring 4.7 inches diagonally.
The processor is a new, low-voltage 486SX, and the Palm Top has space for either two Type II PC cards or one Type III card.
Mobile Pentium revs to 120 MHz
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Intel continued to use its low-voltage 0.35-micron process as a lever to pry open the notebook-computer market this week. The company announced another Pentium processor for notebooks, this time running at 120 MHz.
Intel's notebook push has involved more than just offering low clock frequencies to a power-sensitive market. The company has developed new packaging and some innovative power-
supply ideas just for notebooks.
The packaging takes the form of a tape carrier: thin, light and excellent at spreading heat.
The power technology is necessitated by Intel's latest process. The 0.35-micron Bi-CMOS used for the Pentiums gives Intel a much smaller die and better speed, but it only runs at 2.9 V, not at 3.3 V. Rather than ask notebook vendors to redesign their power supplies, Intel has packaged a dc/dc converter with the Pentium die, so the package runs on 3.3 V and the I/O ring runs at 3.3 V, even if the core of the CPU chip doesn't.
Cellular companies license TCSI's speech synthesis
By Ashok Bindra
BERKELEY, Calif. -- Leading-edge digital signal processing software company TCSI Corp. continues to strike licensing deals for its SuperTalk speech-compression algorithm and Lode (low-power DSP engine) core.
Asahi Kasei Microsystems (AKM), a semiconductor unit of Japan's Asahi Chemical Industry Co. Ltd., has licensed SuperTalk for development of speech coders for the Japanese Personal Digital Cellular (PDC) and North American IS-136 standards. Texas Instruments Inc. has also licensed the algorithm, for development of DSP solutions for U.S. digital cellular standards.
EE Times has also learned that the Korean Electronics Technology Institute (KETI) has selected Lode for use in Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) equipment, as well as other personal-communications services (PCS) products. Details of the agreement were not available
.
HP drives tape technology for servers and PCs
By Terry Costlow
NEW YORK -- Hewlett-Packard Co. is pushing tape-drive technology forward on two fronts, with digital-audio tape (DAT) for servers and other high-end systems, and minicartridge drives for personal computers. In both arenas, HP is trying to bolster its leadership position by doubling the capacity of existing drives.
On the DAT side, HP has implemented the third version of the Digital Data Storage specification, called DDS-3. Drives store as much as 24 Gbytes of compressed data--triple the capacity of the today's DDS-2.
The minicartridge drive uses the highest-capacity version of the Travan tape technology that's starting to move into the marketplace: Travan 4. It holds 4 Gbytes, doubling that when data is compressed.
HP is attempting to improve its first-place position in both segments of the tape-drive market.
During the past couple of years, the company has moved forward steadily to become the leading vendor in each market, market analysts said.
Livingston raises complete ISDN family
By Loring Wirbel
PLEASANTON, Calif. -- Livingston Enterprises Inc. has decided to waste little time moving from remote routers to complete ISDN families. The company is making a full-court press with ISDN servers, branch-office routers and ISA add-in cards, many based on a new AT&T Microelectronics single-chip ISDN device.
Bruce Byrd, director of marketing at Livingston, said that reliance on the AT&T T7903 ISA Multiport Wide Area Connection chip was critical not only for its feature set but to allow Livingston to reach new price points for ISDN systems.
"The thing that will make ISDN happen is, without question, the proliferation of Web sites with graphics and video. Even 28.8-kbit modems just
don't cut it, and we anticipate that interest in BRI [basic-rate ISDN] connectivity will really escalate in the coming year," Byrd said.
Livingston is offering its PortMaster 2E and 2ER communication-server products with five or 10 ports of BRI, based on one or two add-in modules. Existing users of PortMasters can also purchase the modules for field upgrades. Since each port handles two separate 64-kbit channels, the servers will provide 10 or 20 B channels, for prices as low as $334 per channel.
IMS tester analyzes critical timing of submicron ICs
By Stan Runyon
WASHINGTON -- Critical timing is one of the resounding themes of the submicron-chip era. Locating timing problems and faults during development is never easy and, at the moment, perhaps the best method calls for large-scale production automatic-test-equipment (ATE).
Though those machines probably carry the most flexib
le timing resources, they are jealously guarded and might require extensive programming knowledge.
Integrated Measurement Systems believes it can change that. With the company's ATS FT Test Station, engineers no longer have to turn to expensive production testers and no longer must "purloin" them for as long as a week to verify or characterize a processor's timing specs.
The ATS FT Test Station is optimized for critical-path testing, provides interactive timing analysis, and, the company said, shaves at least 20 percent from the price of traditional production ATE systems.
Thick film gets role in 1.5-inch deep TVs
By Terry Costlow
LOS ANGELES -- DuPont Electronic Materials is propelling its thick films into new applications. At the International Society of Hybrid Microelectronics '95 conference here this week, the company unveiled several advances, highlighted by a flat-screen
TV developed by Matsushita Electronics Corp.
DuPont uses ceramic thick films in a 2-inch-thick plasma-display panel. A 26-inch display capable of 16 million colors at a 150:1 contrast ratio was released at the show. The 1.56-inch-thick TV should be available commercially next summer. Matsushita hopes to produce a 40-inch model in 1998.
The TV uses a high-precision resistor in each of the display's discharge cells. The tight resistance control lowers the cell's discharge current, extending cell life while assuring consistent brightness levels. Fine precision is critical, since a 26-inch display has 500,000 pixels, each containing five cells.
NexGen alters 686 pinout
By Brian Fuller
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- NexGen Inc., which is poised to merge with Advanced Micro Devices Inc., will change its non-standard-pinout 686-level processor to a standard Pentium pinout to try for a larger
segment of the x86 market, its president said Monday.
Vinod Dham made the statement at a press conference regarding the $800 million merger with AMD, announced Friday night. AMD Chairman Jerry Sanders said AMD will continue with its K5 Pentium-level effort (which is late), as well as the NexGen 5x86 offering, in a nonstandard pinout. The sixth-generation processor will be NexGen's and will be called the K6. The AMD design team that was working on the AMD version of the 686 will be redeployed.
Of the surprising pinout change, however, Dham said, "without significant redesign we can do a P54C bus to leverage the huge infrastructure" of core logic that is ramping up. The design shift moves away from the non-standard pinout that had required NexGen to lure chipset vendors such as VLSI Technology Inc. and Samsung to manufacture special core logic for NexGen.
Dham said NexGen had to double the level one cache to 64K-bytes to make the switch, which has increased the 686's expected die size about 6 per
cent on a half micron process.
"I'll take a 6 percent die hit to get into the market in a timely way," he added. Dham orchestrated the design and implementation of the Pentium at Intel and came to NexGen in May and quickly convinced the company to move to a standard pinout.
SGRAM speeds 3-D engine
By Junko Yoshida
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- 3Dlabs Inc. plans first-quarter sampling of the Permedia, a low-cost 3-D-graphics-acceleration chip that uses a synchronous graphics RAM (SGRAM) architecture to enhance graphics performance. The chip is a superset of a consumer graphics chip that 3Dlabs licensed to Creative Labs for the latter's 3D Blaster cards.
Incorporating 2-D, 3-D, VGA-acceleration and video-processing capabilities, the chip is the first member of a planned family of devices intended "to move 3-D-graphics capability into every PC," said Neil Trevett, vice president of mark
eting at 3Dlabs.
With a promised street price of less than $250 for a multimedia graphics card based on the first Permedia chip, the family will complement 3Dlabs' high-end Glint 3-D-graphics acceleration chips, optimized for Open GL.
The new chip provides 25 million texture-mapped pixels/second with perspective correction and bilinear filtering. Its 3-D capabilities also include Gouraud shading and optional Z-buffering, at a rate of up to 500,000 texture-mapped polygons/s.
On-chip RGB/YUV conversion and fully filtered bilinear scaling offer 30-frame/s video playback at 640 x 480 resolution, according to 3Dlabs.
Transistor offers smooth signal attenuation
By Chappell Brown
WARREN, N.J. -- Anadigics Inc. has taken a new tack with transistor design that might simplify the design of radio-frequency circuits, offering for the first time an accurate signal attenuator that can
be integrated into standard RF designs.
Called a bootstrapped gate FET (BGFET), the device builds a gate underneath the depletion region using the semi-insulating properties of gallium-arsenide substrates.
Biasing the buried gate with a dc current produces a highly linear ac resistance that can be integrated into any point in an RF circuit. Current design methods attenuate incoming signals with discrete pin diodes that must be mounted on a circuit board with additional components.
"Pin diodes offer unparalleled accuracy for attenuating ac signals, but the inability to integrate this fundamental function into the circuit itself produces needlessly complex designs," said Robert Bayruns, director of new-product research at Anadigics. Pin diodes are available as discrete devices in surface-mount packages and are cheap and reliable. But they require additional capacitors, inductors and a current source to operate.
Hot plate served for detecting gas
By Gail Robinson
GAITHERSBURG, Md. -- A new temperature-programmed sensing technique could simplify the design of gas sensors while making them more versatile. By combining an array of microheaters with very thin films of tin oxide, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have developed a microsensor system that can be tuned to respond to specific gases, widening the potential range of applications to complex mixtures and hostile environments.
The NIST researchers expect the device to solve many issues. "The problems with current gas sensors are their inability to detect a specific gas, their availability only as discrete components, a power consumption of about a half watt and high costs," said Richard Cavicchi, a physicist at NIST's Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory.
In addition to those problems, the science behind the devices is not really understood. "It's kind of a black art in picking th
e metals that you dope the tin oxide with to optimize the performance," Cavicchi said. "Basically, there's a lot of recipe changing as you test them to see how they work out."
Is cognition really compression?
By R. Colin Johnson
BANGOR, Wales -- Theoretical work by a team at the University of Wales proposes that computation, learning and even cognition itself can all be fruitfully viewed as data compression. Led by professor J. Wolff in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Systems, the group has generalized the definition of compression to include almost any data-manipulation technique, whether natural or synthetic.
"All kinds of computing and formal reasoning may usefully be understood as information compression by pattern matching, unification and metrics-guided search," said Wolff. In that view, computation as compression simplifies the seamless integration of var
ious kinds of computing, including normal execution of functions, information retrieval, automated problem solving, fuzzy-pattern recognition, probabilistic reasoning and machine learning.
"It has long been recognized that storage and processing of information in the brain can be usefully understood as data compression," said Wolff. "But ours is the first attempt to understand all types of information processing as compression."
Mobile Pentium revs to 120 MHz
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Intel continued to use its low-voltage 0.35-micron process as a lever to pry open the notebook-computer market last week. The company announced another Pentium processor for notebooks, this time running at 120 MHz.
Intel's notebook push has involved more than just offering low clock frequencies to a power-sensitive market. The company has developed new packaging and some innovative power-
supply ideas
just for notebooks.
The packaging takes the form of a tape carrier: thin, light and excellent at spreading heat.
The power technology is necessitated by Intel's latest process. The 0.35-micron Bi-CMOS used for the Pentiums gives Intel a much smaller die and better speed, but it only runs at 2.9 V, not at 3.3 V. Rather than ask notebook vendors to redesign their power supplies, Intel has packaged a dc/dc converter with the Pentium die, so the package runs on 3.3 V and the I/O ring runs at 3.3 V, even if the core of the CPU chip doesn't.
Multilevel inductors have high Q factor
YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y. -- Constructing single-chip radio-frequency devices requires some means of building inductors on silicon substrates. The problem has proved difficult because capacitive coupling with the substrate degrades the performance of spiral inductors. The traditional spiral shape stems from the nee
d to have a two-dimensional geometry for inductors.
A group at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center here has hit on the idea of using multilevel metal-fabrication techniques to build three-dimensional inductors that can be integrated into standard silicon IC processes. A five-metal-layer geometry produces inductors that performed as well as other approaches that use exotic methods to isolate spiral inductors from the substrate.
Large field emitter shows record current
CHIBA, Japan -- Sony Corp. claims a record current output for large-area field emitter arrays.
The company fabricated an array of 6 million field emitters on a 1- by 1.5-centimeter silicon chip, measuring an anode current of 63.8 mA at 58.7 V. High currents are required to build bright displays with the devices.
The high performance may be the result of a unique structure that uses a thermal-oxidized silicon-dioxide
film and an insulator layer that separates the gate electrodes from the substrate. The concept had been verified with single devices, but this was the first measurement on an array.
AT&T strides into system-level chip business
By Ron Wilson
ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- AT&T, the relatively quiet world leader in cell-based ASICs, is preparing to make a little noise by drawing a bead on the system-level chip business in consumer electronics. The goliath is readying a major push beyond it tradition mixed-signal communications focus, adding a wide range of new cores, including 960 and SPARC 32-bit CPUs, DSP cores, and DRAM and Flash arrays. But rival IBM Microelectronics, also armed with a 0.35-micron-drawn process, is accelerating down the same path.
AT&T's new push is led by process evolution. The company is now taking designs for a family of three 0.35-micron-drawn processes. The thre
e are tuned for, respectively, 3.3 V high performance, 3.3 V with 5 V I/O and 2.5 V low-power operation.
In tandem with the process advances, AT&T is rolling out a wide range of new complex cores and memory arrays. Some of these will bring entirely new architectural alternatives to the design community.
Meanwhile, IBM Microelectronics is moving along the same route. The company said last week that it would be bringing a range of CPU cores and supporting circuits to its ASIC libraries in early 1996.
First among these will be the long-promised PowerPC 400-series CPU cores. Joining them later will be the X86 cores from IBM's partner, NexGen Microsystems. There are also plans to license and port popular industry-standard DSP cores--the company would not discuss specific names--and IBM's own MWave DSP.
The next big PC battle: clustering interconnects
By Rick Boyd-Merritt
HOUSTON
-- PC makers are forming battle lines over what might seem to be an unlikely, even arcane, piece of technology: system interconnects for clustering. At least three design efforts are being proposed as the core of clustering technology in future PC server operating systems such as Microsoft's Windows NT.
As a central message of its biennial Innovate conference here, Compaq Computer Corp. announced it was working with Tandem Computer Inc. to develop clustering interconnects based on Tandem's ServerNet technology that it hopes will become a standard for PC servers. Hewlett-Packard Co. is quietly working with Novell Inc. and SCO (formerly the Santa Cruz Operation) to develop clustering technology that will hit the market next year for their NetWare and Unix environments.
Digital Equipment Corp. has been lobbying Microsoft Corp. to use in Windows NT clustering technology derived from work DEC pioneered for its Vax systems. Other companies that have developed some clustering technology or hope to have a s
ay in any broadly adopted specification include AT&T, Data General, Intel and Sequent.
DSP EDA tool houses to show major upgrades
By Richard Goering and Ashok Bindra
BOSTON -- The next generation of EDA tools for digital signal processing will unfold here at this week's International Conference on Signal Processing Applications and Technology (ICSPAT '95) and DSP World Expo. Each of the three leading providers of DSP EDA tools--Cadence's Alta Group, Synopsys and Mentor Graphics--will unveil significant upgrades that expand the scope of their tools.
The Alta Signal Processing Worksystem (SPW), Synopsys Cossap and Mentor Graphics DSP Station tool sets bite off the lion's share of the fast-growing DSP EDA market.
Alta Group (Sunnyvale, Calif.), the revenue leader, is announcing what it calls the "convergence simulation architecture" for the new SPW version 3.5. Synopsys Inc. (Mo
untain View, Calif.) is releasing Cossap 7.0, which includes a new user interface, a Verilog co-simulation interface, and a new library of behavioral models. Mentor Graphics Corp. (Wilsonville, Ore.) is adding a power analysis capability to the Mistral behavioral synthesis program in DSP Station.
Startup claims it can store multiple bits in one DRAM cell
By Ron Wilson
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A tiny startup here, founded by a longtime player in the Japanese electronics business, claimed last week to have achieved one of the DRAM industry's most sought-after goals: storing multiple bits of data reliably in a single DRAM cell. The company, Solidas, said that by careful noise management and circuit design it has stored and retrieved analog voltages with up to 10-bit resolution.
This would be the equivalent of packing 10 bits of data into each cell of a DRAM. "We can demonstrate 10 bits/cell i
n the laboratory," said Greg LeVeille, vice president of sales and marketing. "We feel comfortable predicting that a commercial product based on this technology could store 6 bits/cell."
The Solidas technology rests upon a thorough extermination of the sources of noise and instability in a DRAM cell, according to founder, president and CEO Tamio Saito. His DRAM cell comprises two transistors and a storage capacitor. This makes it somewhat larger than a conventional one-transistor DRAM cell.
Wanted: MPEG test tools
By Junko Yoshida
WASHINGTON -- As the International Test Conference opens this week here, it is becoming evident that test and measurement equipment companies have barely scratched the surface of a potentially huge market opportunity for technology and product development: designing fundamental methods and tools to test and measure compressed digital television transmissions
.
While the world is rapidly turning to digital compression, the vast majority of test and measurement devices for sophisticated video equipment remains either stuck on analog or, at best, uncompressed digital.
The traditional analog waveform monitors, oscilloscopes and vector analyzers that television engineers have depended on to measure "signal quality" of TV systems give little or no useful information for compressed signals, said David Fibush, product development program manager at Tektronix Inc. When it comes to compressed digital TV, where signals are compressed and decompressed with digital artifacts coming in as part of the process, "what you have to measure is not signal quality but picture quality," Fibush said.
As satellite, cable/telco and terrestrial broadcasters begin to transmit digitally compressed video to TVs at home, those who deliver services and who build broadcast encoders and consumer-use decoder boxes are now clamoring for MPEG testing tools.
Intel founds group for Internet TV
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Intel Corp. today will announce an industry consortium called Intercast Industry Group that will try to marry TV broadcasting with the Internet on the PC platform.
The Intel-developed underlying technology, called Intercast, lets PC users receive and decode TV programs accompanied by additional information--text and graphics--on Web pages that are broadcasted by using vertical blanking intervals (VBI) of TV signals.
The Intercast content, created with HTML and expected in mid-1996, will include hyperlinks to related information on the Internet.
The group is composed of TV broadcast companies such as NBC, CNN and PBS's WGBH, plus programmers like QVC and Viacom. Also involved are system vendors Packard Bell and Gateway 2000 and software developers such as Netscape Communications, America Online and Asymetrix.
Intel will provide a TV tuner board that
incorporates software control, A/D and an ASIC to decode the VBI information. The architecture of the board can be licensed from Intercast Industry Group free.
Information on the Intercast Industry Group is available at http://www.intercast.org.
Intergraph starts P6 graphics push
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- Intergraph Corp. dropped the other shoe last week in its strategic plan to become a major player in the 3-D graphics arena. The company's computer-systems division unveiled its TDZ series of workstations, built around Intel's P6 (now officially called the Pentium Pro).
The machines, which come equipped with OpenGL-based graphics accelerators and run Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, will target 3-D applications such as animation, simulation and multimedia. Single-, dual- and four-processor models will be offered.
Intergraph hopes the machines will capture potential customers of
competing mid-range Indy and Indigo 2 workstations from Silicon Graphics by offering what Intergraph said was better performance at a cost thousands of dollar less.
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