Reusable Software Component Market
Microsoft Corp.'s OLE technology is a programmer-oriented software component technology for Windows
only. OLE servers and OLE controls are software components that can be used by programmers to simplify the assembly of their own programs, in a manner similar to C++ classes. IBM's SOM is a similar programmer-oriented software component technology for OS/2, Unix and Windows. IBM's distributed SOM (DSOM) goes a step beyond SOM and OLE by adding the ability to coordinate interacting components that are distributed over a network, as if they were a single application.
Video CD coming soon to a PC near you
By Yoshiko Hara
TOKYO -- Want to watch a video CD on your PC? The Open MPEG Windows Forum (OMWF), an industry consortium for multimedia content compatibility, has developed a standard that will add Video CD, a CD-based MPEG 1 (Moving Picture Experts Group) video standard for video players, as a standard video source for personal computers.
"This guideline will add Windows machines as ano
ther platform in addition to Video CD players. Video CD is now becoming popular in Japan and in Asia for karaoke and movie applications. With this guideline, Video CD has a chance in the U.S. market, where a lot of personal computers include MPEG boards," said a spokesman for the forum.
The guideline makes it easier for video CD title producers and driver developers to adhere to a standard. Microsoft and the Open MPEG Consortium (OM1) in the United States have defined the MPEG MCI (Multimedia Control Interface) as a standard control procedure for MPEG boards in the Windows environment. But it still allows for different interpretations, resulting in poor compatibility.
Flat-panel vendors compete for market niches
By David Lieberman and Junko Yoshida
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- One of 1996's major battlegrounds for flat-panel displays began to take shape at the Stanford Resources Flat Informati
on Display conference this week. Passive and active-matrix (AM) LCD vendors, and electroluminescent (EL) display market leader Planar Systems Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.), declared their intention to pursue the same vast landscape of niche display applications.
Indeed, the fast-changing technology picture appears to leave up for grabs many applications in the previously neatly segmented flat-panel display arena. Passive LCDs will strive for higher performance to hold onto their sockets in industrial, instrumentation, transportation and point-of-sale display applications; AM LCDs will seek to push excess capacity into the less price-sensitive of those sockets; and EL will undergo a radical repositioning to find a middle price ground.
A glut of AM LCD panels for the notebook-computer market and an accompanying price collapse have greatly narrowed the cost differential between passive and AM LCDs. The glut is sending AM LCD vendors scrambling to find new applications. The average market price for a 10.4-inch,
color AM LCD panel, scheduled for delivery in the first quarter of 1996, has slipped as low as $400--one-third the price of the same panel last year, said Michael Kim, executive director at LG Electronics Inc. (San Jose), more commonly known as Goldstar.
Solarex claims mark in thin-film efficiency
NEWTOWN, Pa. -- Solarex (Frederick, Md.), the nation's largest manufacturer of photovoltaic cells, said it has achieved record thin-film efficiency using copper indium gallium diselinide (CIGS), attaining conversion efficiency of 13 percent.
That performance was confirmed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory here via use of standard illumination conditions on a CIGS submodule that measured 40 cm2 and was divided into 20 segments.
Solarex attributed the results to improved materials-deposition methods, advances in module fabrication processes and improved module design.
The company
, which is a unit of Amoco/Enron Solar, predicted that the demonstration of high efficiency over a large area, coupled with the potentially low cost of the thin-film module, makes the CIGS technology a candidate for future large-scale production for bulk-power generation.
Solarex is building a factory now for multijunction amorphous silicon production.
MCNC now licensing thin-film Pads process
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- The Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC) is offering its Plasma Assisted Dry Soldering (Pads) process to companies on a licensing basis. The research center describes Pads as a high-reliability soldering process that eliminates several steps and that thus leads to cost savings on the production line.
Developed by MCNC researcher Nicholas Koopman, Pads is based on the ability of metals to bond spontaneously when contact surfaces are cleaned of all oxide
s and contaminants. Flux is normally used in the soldering process to clean metal surfaces to create a reliable bond. But the flux itself becomes a contaminant.
The new approach uses a plasma to dry clean the metal, eliminating the flux and the additional cleanup step. The result is a more efficient process with fewer environmentally damaging solvents.
The technique has been integrated into standard industry processes, such as wave soldering, and MCNC has a program to integrate Pads in equipment offered by toll suppliers.
Several companies are undergoing trials with their manufacturing systems. The licensing fees reportedly have been set at a level that encourages widespread use of the process.
Europe to cut duties on semiconductors
MADRID, Spain -- Duties on semiconductors imported to the European Union will be reduced beginning Jan. 1 and could be eliminated by the year 2
000. Some semiconductor chips carry tariffs as high 14 percent.
The agreement--part of a broader move to abolish tariffs and trade barriers on all information-technology goods, including subsystems, computers and software--was announced following talks here between the United States and the European Union.
The terms, reached by U.S. trade representative Mickey Kantor and Sir Leon Brittan, vice president of the European Union, call for the European Union to fix at 7 percent those tariffs that are 7 percent or more and to abolish tariffs below 7 percent.
New Year's to ring in QuickTime Live
SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple Computer Inc. is planning a "live, interactive, on-line event" on New Year's Eve to unveil its QuickTime Live! program. The "virtual venue" will air over a specially created Web site (http://live.apple.com) and will aim to underscore Apple's claim that the program lets users
"view live events over the Internet, bridging the gap between real-time and virtual space."
The debut, a partnership with Bill Graham Presents: San Francisco New Year's Eve, will feature such performers as Santana and the Gin Blossoms. Using Apple's QuickTake digital camera to capture live images, Apple's QuickTime VR software to thread the images together and Apple Workgroup servers to connect to the Internet, the debut will capture live content from the event and deliver it to an Internet audience via the Web site. Apple plans to use QuickTime! Live for similar coverage of the 1996 Sundance Film Festival.
Aiming at telecom, Fujitsu sets U.S. mixed-signal IC team
By Loring Wirbel
San Jose, Calif. -- Fujitsu Microelectronics Inc. has established a dedicated design team at its U.S. headquarters to work on "frame"-based semicustom mixed-signal designs based on the company's new BiC
MOS process. The RF/IF process technology, with bipolar emitter widths ranging from 0.6 to 0.8 micron and CMOS gate lengths ranging from 0.8 to 1.2 microns, has a toggle frequency of 28 GHz.
Dennis Burman, marketing manager for telecom products at Fujitsu, said that the new semicustom designs will allow customers to combine such wireless analog front-end functions as synthesizer, mixer, low-noise amp and voltage-controlled oscillator in a single device. Non-recurring-engineering costs for design services could range from virtually free to $150,000, depending on an OEM's willingness to allow Fujitsu to use ASIC designs in the future as the basis for standard products.
Glenn Fraser, manager of analog LSI engineering at Fujitsu, said that outside designers with some RF experience could work directly with Spice behavioral models, providing specs to Fujitsu for predefined blocks. But in many cases, Fujitsu prefers to work with system radio specs provided by the customer, including performance parameters an
d I/O, designing the semicustom devices by fitting them to the best set of "frames," similar to analog tiles with predefined macro blocks. Such blocks can include prescalers, phase-locked loops (PLL) and generic analog functions.
Daimler-Benz calls off acquisition of ITT chip operation
FREIBURG, Germany -- Daimler-Benz, the German automotive-to-aerospace giant, has canceled its intended acquisition of ITT Intermetall GmbH, which runs a 0.8-micron mixed-signal IC wafer fab here and an assembly plant at Colmar, France. Daimler-Benz had agreed in principle to merge ITT Intermetall with its microelectronics subsidiary Temic GmbH (Heilbron, Germany).
Neither Daimler-Benz nor Temic has explained why the acquisition was canceled. One reason could be that having seen in detail what was on offer, the acquisition, even in times of manufacturing capacity shortages, was unattractive. Or it could b
e because Daimler-Benz's AEG subsidiary, through which it owns part of Temic, has just announced a radical restructuring expected to result in thousands of job losses. It might have proved difficult to explain why it was taking on nearly 2,000 workers at ITT Intermetall at this time.
Thomas Fischer, managing director of ITT Intermetall, said, "I think Temic was disappointed to be told the deal was off."
He said that ITT Intermetall continues to trade profitably and that he expects sales to grow 20 percent in 1995, up from about $240 million in 1994 to about $290 million.
GVC, Packard Bell, NEC ally on monitors
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- GVC Corp. of Taiwan this week entered a partnership agreement with Packard Bell Electronics Corp. and NEC Corp. to build a factory in China that will have production capacity for 120,000 monitors a month. Packard Bell and NEC will both contribute $2.6 millio
n to the project; GVC will kick in $2.3 million.
Taiwan's stock market reacted with alarm, given the recent disclosure that Pack-
ard Bell owes Intel Corp. $470 million. GVC and other Taiwanese suppliers, including Tatung Corp. and Lite On Technology Co., said Packard Bell is current in its payments to them. Packard Bell chief executive officer Beny Alagem reportedly has asked Tatung to supply CRTs to the new monitor facility.
The partnership fulfills "two basic business needs. Packard Bell accounts for about 30 percent of GVC's monitor business, and recent shortages in CRTs have prevented GVC from meeting GVC's demand," said GCV senior vice president K.C. Cheng. "NEC is a major CRT manufacturer and can alleviate GVC's problem of obtaining sufficient supplies of CRTs."
Diode-based detector speeds DNA analysis
By Gail Robinson
LIVERMORE, Calif. -- Researchers at Lawrenc
e Livermore National Laboratory have successfully miniaturized the critical fluorescence detectors used in microfabrication polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based DNA-analysis systems. The development is part of a continuing Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arpa) initiative to design a miniature, portable analysis system that could generate millions or billions of DNA copies in a few hours.
The polymerase chain reaction is a biochemical means of getting DNA to clone itself repeatedly so that tiny amounts of DNA can be "amplified" for easy detection and characterization. Livermore's handheld, feedback-controlled thermal-cycling instrument, based on ICs and other electronics, micromachining and low-cost optical components, is said to have successfully detected human, bacteria and viral DNA, including the eight most common mutations associated with cystic fibrosis and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
The instrument "gives a real-time quantitative analysis of how much DNA you are amplifying," said M.
Allen Northrup, a biomedical engineer in the Microtechnology Center of the Engineering Research Division at Lawrence Livermore. "Basically, the light-emitting diode is of high enough power and the silicon photodiode is also sufficient for the detection. So, it's low cost; the price of the components is an order of magnitude less than with conventional systems." Components for the thermal cycler run about $100.
Int'l Rectifier cuts on-resistance of power MOSFETs
By Ashok Bindra
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- International Rectifier Corp. says it has cut the critical on-resistance of its Hexfet power MOSFETs, now in their fifth generation, by about 65 percent compared with the previous generation. Cell-density improvements, finer geometries and a self-alignment technique are said to have enabled the change.
Using a cell density of 6 million cells/square inch, IR reduced the Hexfets' maximu
m Rds(on) to 6 milohms for n-channel devices. IR engineers also simplified the fabrication process so that the devices require only four mask steps, compared with the six steps required for previous generations. That cuts manufacturing time by roughly 30 percent, according to the company.
A new family of devices produced from the process will range from 20 V to 100 V, with current capability ranging from 0.5 A in a Micro3 surface-mount package to about 100 A in a TO-220. IR said the process innovations learned through the development of Generation 5 Hexfets will also be extended to higher-voltage devices.
"This development has proven to us that significant gains are still possible with a planar DMOS structure in the evolution of the power MOSFET," IR said in a statement. Work has already begun on Generation 6 of the technology.
Cabletron's SmartSwitch stands alone or fits in hub
By Loring Wirbel
ROCHESTER, N.H. -- Cabletron Systems Inc. has spun its SmartSwitch frame-switching ASIC as both a standalone workgroup switch and as modules for the Multi-Media Access Center (MMAC) hub. The rollout of the family coincides with Cabletron's announcement of an offer to acquire Standard Microsystems Corp.'s (SMC) Enterprise Switching Division.
Acquiring SMC's "TigerSwitch" would give Cabletron faster access to 100-Mbit/second Ethernet technology and smaller workgroup switches.
SmartSwitch features already have been embedded in the high-end MMAC-Plus enterprise hub. Retrofitting the ASICs into the midrange MMAC accelerates packet throughput in that hub by a factor of 15: from 50,000 to 750,000 packets/s. As many as 16,000 MAC addresses can be handled in each switch.
The SmartSwitch occupies two slots in the MMAC, as a subchassis within the main chassis. This subchassis then offers three slots: one for a control module and two for network-interface modules.
Cabletron also has
configured the subchassis to function as a standalone LAN switch for the workgroup, capable of supporting up to 48 switched Ethernet segments as well as a high-speed uplink.
Data I/O's logic programming given Windows GUI
By Stan Runyon
REDMOND, Wash. -- Data I/O continues to take logic programming to new heights. This time, the boost is provided by two innovations: a native Microsoft Windows user interface for device programmers and a low-end programmer that provides universal socketing, functionality and other features usually confined to high-end programming systems.
The idea is to let engineers come up to speed quickly, even if they have not programmed parts for some period of time. To that end, the company designed the new interface from the ground up, so it is fully compliant and can take advantage of Windows features found on many productivity and design tools.
Consequ
ently, the GUI runs from the program manager, and other software applications can run at the same time. Users can quickly switch between applications, as necessary.
The Model 2700 Programming System, is a single-socket, universal unit for FPGAs, PLDs, microcontrollers and memory devices. In its basic configuration, the 2700 supports DIPs and PLCCs. Also included are Data I/O's MatchBook device carriers, for accurately aligning and holding PLCCs over the programming site.
Delays seen in PowerPC reference platform
By Mark Carroll
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The Power PC Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) won't be fully ported to all six PowerPC platform operating systems until sometime in 1996, technical experts from the AIM (Apple/IBM/Motorola) PowerPC consortium told engineers assembled here for a weeklong seminar on the status of PowerPC systems and components. The revelation could pus
h Asian companies' PowerPC product schedules well into next year.
CHRP-compliant PowerPC platforms (PPPs) are designed to run six operating systems transparently: AIX, Windows NT, NetWare, Solaris, OS/2 and MacOS. Motorola Inc. and IBM Corp. both announced CHRP-compliant boards at Comdex.
But neither the IBM nor the Motorola PPP subsystems can yet run MacOS or OS/2, according to Loc Nguyen, manager of the IBM PowerPC Technical Center.
Pete Alexander, technical support manager of Apple Computer Inc.'s OEM licensing R&D unit, acknowledged that "MacOS and the PPP hardware still aren't totally matched,' despite the spate of 18-hour days devoted to that task both before and after Comdex. Work still needs to be done on matching the MacOS boot ROM and the PPP boot ROM, Alexander added, though he said he's confident that full compatibility "will happen soon.'
Samsung grabs for 64-Mbit DRAM lead
By Ron Wilson
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Samsung Semiconductor Inc. is trying to jump-start demand for 64-Mbit DRAMs in 1996, advancing the transition to the new memory generation by at least a year and snatching the initiative from Japanese DRAM manufacturers. In a highly unusual move, Samsung is publishing its pricing for the new parts, hoping to persuade customers that now is the time to jump to 64 Mbits.
"The Japanese vendors have been calling 64-Mbit DRAMs a 1998 product. But we plan to move good volumes of 64-Mbit DRAMs in 1996, and to reach really high volumes in 1997,' said Mark Ellsberry, vice president of memory marketing at Samsung. "To do this, we will reduce budgetary prices on 64-Mbit DRAMs through 1996, reaching five times the 16-Mbit price by the end of the year. We will make the price-per-bit crossover in 1997.'
In addition, he said, "We believe that most 64-Mbit designs will be synchronous designs.'
"We are going to be absolutely up-front about the premium for SDRAM ove
r EDO DRAM," Ellsberry asserted. "Right now, SDRAMs are selling at about a 25-percent premium over similarly organized EDO parts. In the first half of 1996, we will drop that figure to 16 percent, then 8 percent in the second half. In the first half of 1997, there will be no premium for SDRAM."
Toshiba sets $1.3B for 0.25-micron fab
By David Lammers
TOKYO -- Toshiba Corp. will invest $1.3 billion in a 0.25-micron logic IC fab line at its Iwate site in northern Japan, where production is expected to begin in the spring of 1998. The fab will provide system-design engineers with integrated "system-ASIC" components using core logic from both Toshiba and outside logic-design houses, said Susumu Kohyama, in charge of Toshiba's logic-IC operations.
The addition to the Toshiba Iwate facility will be the proving ground for a "concurrent engineering' type of computer-integrated-manufacturing (
CIM) system. The CIM software, still under development, will allow engineers in IC design and manufacturing to work more closely and to bridge their efforts to technical marketing, sales, shipping, accounting and other parts of the product flow.
Switching from one process "recipe' to another, for dozens of different production lots, is a manufacturing challenge that requires sophisticated flow control, a skill that Taiwan's TSMC, for example, has mastered.
Fireworks expected at TV hearing
WASHINGTON -- The Federal Communications Commission will stage a digital-TV hearing today (Tuesday) that one agency official promises will be a "doozy.'
The five FCC commissioners will hear industry visions and concerns about digital TV, as the agency prepares to roll out the service as early as November 1996. Also on the hearing's agenda are the effects of the transition to DTV on broadcasts and co
nsumers.
Critics of the HDTV Grand Alliance specification said that the U.S. standard must work with with the rest of the emerging digital infrastructure.
Among those scheduled to testify are Tele-TV's Ed Grebow, deal maker Barry Diller, Motorola's John Major and Bruce Allan of Thomson Consumer Electronics.
MCI to launch ISDN trials
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- MCI Telecommunications Corp. will launch multirate ISDN video trials out of its systems engineering group here, using the IsoEnet (Isochronous Ethernet) protocols developed by National Semiconductor Corp. The trials, which will allow users to dial up any desired bandwidth in 64-kbit/second "B' channel chunks, will use the Conversational Media hub platform from Incite, a spinoff of Intecom Corp. (Dallas).
The pact represents the first public carrier trials for Incite and the first telco test of IsoEnet for National. While Nat
ional Semiconductor won official IEEE approval for IsoEnet in the 802.9a standard, MCI effort give the LAN/WAN interface standard some visibility and credibility.
Chris Rothlis, the senior manager of intelligent network integration at MCI, said that the 1996 trials will focus primarily on videoconferencing.
DVD camps set name, specs
TOKYO -- The two digital video disk (DVD) camps formally came together last Friday, agreeing to call their unified standard "DVD" and to quickly deal with patent issues. However, the systems and disks sold in each of the world's major markets may differ somewhat to adhere to broadcasting standards, and a copy- protection scheme is being proposed for worldwide adoption by the Electronic Industries Association of Japan.
At a news conference, executives from JVC, Hitachi, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Mitsubishi Electric, Philips, Pioneer, Sony, Time Warner
and Toshiba appeared together and said that agreement was reached on all major issues.
Thomson's representative could not attend the meeting because of the labor strike in France, but with the addition of Time Warner, the DVD group grew to 10 members.
The members will release more details Dec. 12 at a DVD seminar planned for here.
The basic specifications agreed upon included no new surprises. They called for a 120-mm-diameter disk made of bonded 0.6-cm substrates, with an optical pickup using a 650- or 635-nm wavelength laser and 4.7 Gbytes of storage per side, yielding 133 minutes of MPEG-2-compressed video (
full story
).
Avant! hit by criminal probe and a Cadence civil suit
By Richard Goering
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- In a legal double whammy, Avant! Corp.--the recently merged combination of ArcSys and Integrated Silicon Systems was hit la
st week with a criminal investigation by Santa Clara County and a civil suit by Cadence Design Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif. The charge: theft of source code. The dramatic developments could pose a severe challenge to the high-profile IC CAD vendor, which has been eroding Cadence's market lead.
Last Tuesday, about 25 officers from the FBI and local police agencies raided Avant! headquarters. No charges were filed and little information was released, but some unspecified evidence for an ongoing criminal investigation was seized.
The following day, Cadence issued a civil lawsuit against Avant! and four individuals, including one purported "contractor" who is already facing felony charges for the alleged theft of Cadence IC CAD software. The lawsuit contains a number of charges, including copyright infringement, unfair competition, misappropriation of trade secrets, conspiracy, breach of contract and false advertising. A restraining order was issued later the same day to prevent tampering with evidenc
e.
"We believe we have incontrovertible evidence that Avant! is a company built and sustained with intellectual property stolen from Cadence," declared Joe Costello, Cadence president and CEO.
Avant! vigorously denied all charges. "Through this civil lawsuit, Cadence has admitted that it can't compete in the marketplace," said Gerald Hsu, Avant! president and CEO, in a prepared statement. "The lawsuit is without merit. Allegations that Avant! is built on Cadence technology are laughable. No one wants Cadence technology."
Investor-rich flat-panel startup finally will show a prototype
By David Lieberman
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Once again hitting the private financing trail, 1991 flat-panel-display startup Silicon Video Corp. plans to publicly demonstrate a prototype for the first time at the Stanford Resources Flat Information Display conference here next week. The company has reportedly
accumulated over $100 million in four previous rounds of private financing and hopes to pick up about $300 million more in the current round and an initial stock offering to be launched early next year.
Silicon Video's "thin CRT" prototype--a field-emission display (called DaVinci internally) measures 2.4 inches diagonally and contains 120 x 140 pixels--is not yet operational. But it is the precursor of a 12.1-inch field-emission display that will grace the Compaq OmniBook portable computer in 1997. For competitors wondering how the startup has picked up so much financing without even having a glowing panel to put in a prospective investor's hands, one industry analyst had an answer. "Chutzpah," he said.
Then there's the strategy. Where the U.S. flat-panel display industry traditionally plays hit and run with Japanese industry by niche hunting, said Mary Tilton, vice president of R&D at Standish LCD in Laker Mills, Wis., Silicon Video's core strategy from the get-go has been to take on the Japan
ese AM LCD makers in the heart of their market: the notebook computer. The reason, as company chairman, president and CEO Harry Marshall sees it, a large target market is required to justify making the enormous investment required to bring a new technology to light of day.
Startup developing PowerPC three times more powerful than Pentium
By Brian Fuller and Ron Wilson
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A tiny Silicon Valley startup, armed with a seasoned management team, a major customer and a proprietary bipolar library, has suddenly become the heir apparent to the PowerPC empire. Exponential Technology Inc. will officially announce that it is using $14 million in funds--much of that from Apple Computer Corp.--to develop a BiCMOS PowerPC CPU three times more powerful than existing Pentium processors. One of the first sockets for the new CPU will be an Apple Power Macintosh.
Exponential was founded
in 1993 by George Taylor, now its chief technical officer, and Jim Blomgren, a member of the technical staff. Both designers have CPU design experience, and both have worked with bipolar ECL implementations of microprocessors, through associations with Bipolar Integrated Technology Inc. the failed bipolar VLSI vendor.
The two brought their accumulated architecture and circuit experience together to develop a bipolar PowerPC CPU.
"We are building a high-speed PowerPC with bipolar logic in the core and BiCMOS caches," explained Taylor. "The first implementation will have 32-bit internal data paths and a 64-bit external bus compatible with the PowerPC 604. Later versions may use a more powerful bus to get more performance."
Unified Memory Architecture vendors defy Microsoft
By Ron Wilson
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Despite opposition from Microsoft, graphics chip vendors are continuing to
pursue Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) as a way to reduce cost in moderate-priced personal computers. This week S3 Inc. announced a UMA version of its popular Trio 64V+ chip, while the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) is drawing closer to a standard UMA architecture.
Meanwhile, some vendors are already looking beyond first-generation UMA to more comprehensive approaches to memory sharing, where UMA would actually enhance system performance. But the specter of Microsoft interference still looms over the entire effort.
"Basically, we are trying to migrate fast Pentium PCs into the home market," said Glenn Schuster, marketing manager at S3. "Home PC customers are showing a preference for high-speed Pentium systems. But a 64-bit-wide, 2-Mbyte frame buffer is a painful cost for systems to carry in this segment. Taking $30 of memory off the motherboard, and either cutting price or adding cache, is a big win for systems vendors."
S3's approach, like the coming VESA standard, is simple. Th
e company has simply adapted its existing Trio 64V+ GUI accelerator chip to connect to the system memory bus rather than to a private DRAM frame buffer. A simple arbitration scheme prevents the GUI chip, the CPU and the PCI bus from colliding with each other in their attempts to access main memory.
Net-censorship provision OK'd
By George Leopold
WASHINGTON -- Privacy groups vow legal action to block a House cyberporn measure that opponents charge will censor the Internet and interactive media.
The vote by House negotiators came after a House-Senate conference on telecommunication legislation approved 33 staff recommendations for resolving some remaining issues. Among the conferees' provisions was a plan to adopt so-called V-chip technology to restrict violent programs.
House negotiators approved elements of competing anti-smut proposals offered by Reps. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman
of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rick White, R-Wash. The Hyde proposal was backed by the Christian Coalition while White's compromise was supported by privacy and business groups. Backers of the tougher Hyde proposal claimed victory last week, and the House bill is similar to a strict measure contained in the Senate's telecom bill. The House action ensures an "indecency" provision in the final telecommunications bill.
The House measure makes it illegal for on-line providers to knowingly transmit obscene or other "indecent" materials to minors over computer services, including the Internet. While on-line services would not be liable, providers could face up to two years in jail and $100,00 in fines.
"The [House] provisions would make the Internet and interactive media the most heavily regulated communications medium in the United States," warned the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology.
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