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  Headlines and summaries from the pages of Electronic Engineering Times . Previous editions are available from the 1994 , 1995 , 1996 , 1997 , and 1998 News Archives.
Friday, November 1, 1996 Startup's technology will connect phones, handhelds, TVs to the NetiReady Corp., an eight-person startup here, on Monday will unveil a reusable core design for enabling Internet connectivity in handhelds, phones, TVs and other consumer-electronics devices at claimed low cost and low power. The chipless company plans to license its Internet Tuner cores as HDL models to consumer-electronics companies and silicon vendors.U.K. backs Euro researchA change of heart within the U.K. government means companies such as GEC Plessey Semiconductors (Swindon, England) may get financial support in the European collaborative research program called Micro-Electronics Developments for European Applications (Medea). One result would be a helping hand in preparing for next-generation chip-manufacturing technologies.Mediamatics plays one-stop DVD shopAspiring to provide one-stop DVD shopping for PC OEMs, Mediamatics Inc. has launched a family of MPEG-2 and AC-3 decoding solutions including a software-only scheme that could have a big impact on graphics-chip accelerators. It is tailored for PCs equipped with Intel Corp. MMX CPUs.DVD copy protection agreement reachedThe DVD copy-protection deal announced by the entertainment and electronics industries this week adopts a compromise encryption scheme brokered by Intel and IBM, as well as a licensing arrangement for decryption technology.Fujitsu lays semicustom 'Tile' for RF designFujitsu Microelectronics Inc. is bringing semicustom design concepts to RF/IF realms with the launch of the Versi-Tile design method, which combines CMOS phase-locked loo ps (PLLs) and bipolar mixers, voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) and other blocks in predefined "frames." Fujitsu marketers said the approach could revolutionize cost-effective development of functions like dual-band digital cellular phones.
Thursday, October 31, 1996Web security threat growsFor all its promise, the World Wide Web is proving to be a major security headache. From servers to browsers to multimedia programming languages, researchers warn that the wide-open Web is vulnerable to attack and resistant to near-term fixes in its current state.Eagle, Synopsys in pactBringing a well-known set of processor models into a hardware/software coverification environment, Synopsys' Logic Modeling Group has developed an optimized library of models for the Eaglei and EagleV toolsets from Eagle Design Automation. The library allows users to develop and debug both har dware and embedded software before physical prototypes are built.Japanese vendors get jump on interactive TV with U.S. startup's aidThe seeds of a potential TV-broadcasting revolution were sown here in recent weeks, as TV Tokyo initiated commercial broadcasts of interactive programming that leverages the television signal's vertical blanking interval (VBI) and as Toshiba Corp. shipped equipment that supports VBI-based interactivity.Slump's over. Now what'll spur growth?Semiconductor executives, many of whom gathered here recently for Dataquest Inc.'s annual forecast conference, seem to agree that the worst of the electronics recession is over at this point. The dramatic falloff that began nearly a year ago has "hit bottom," according to forecasters, and the industry may in fact show nominal growth in the fourth quarter.
Wednesday, October 30, 1996Dataflow architecture runs on FPGAA field-programmable gate array (FPGA) design here at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is using a novel approach to reconfigurable computing by directly implementing a data-flow programming paradigm. The technique promises to solve several of the inherent bottlenecks that hobble attempts to build general-purpose computing units using arrays of FPGAs.FET process offers high-speed, low-cost circuitsA new process for building compound semiconductor field-effect transistors, developed here by researchers at the University of California, may offer a route to ultra-dense gallium-arsenide and indium-phosphide circuits. Called super self-aligned submicron single metal FET (SASSFET), the technology offers a simpler option for reaching 0.2-micron design rules using conventional optical lithography, according to researchers on the project.Design-flow manager added to FPGA suiteReaching out to new users of language-based tools, Viewlogic Systems Inc. has introduced Intelliflow, a design-flow manager embedded in the new Workview Office 7.3 release. Viewlogic has also improved its FPGA synthesis and started to re-sell an OEM version of StateCAD, a graphical state-machine editor from Visual Software Solutions.USC data-path processor recycles powerFirst silicon is on the way for a CMOS microprocessor that potentially could use 80 percent less power than those made using conventional designs. The device, a 16-bit RISC data-path microprocessor running at 50 MHz, is a milestone in a decade of work on a low-power methodology that has been under way at various research centers.Neural software offers greater flexibilityTrajan Software Ltd. is releasing both shareware and commercial versions of a neural-network software package that is intended to maximize end-use flexibility by mixing a variety of approaches.
Tuesday, October 29, 1996Big Blue reengineers to gain a Net edgeIBM is still playing catch-up to the big Net winners Netscape, Microsoft and Sun. But if Patrick and the thousands of other staffers working on Big Blue's networking strategies have anything to say about it, "I.B.M." will soon stand for "Internet Business Machines."MCI sees an end to flat-payment billingThe price of surfing may be going up. MCI Communications Corp., the Internet's premier carrier, appears ready to replace today's flat-payment method with a new pricing scheme based on how much data is transmitted. The reason: MCI wants to accommodate what it calls value-added services -- such as real-time videoconferencing, 3-D graphics and Internet voice calling.PBX links indoor wireless spread-spectrum phonesSpectraLink Corp. is providing digital PBX and key-system connectivity for its wireless in-building spread-spectrum phone system. Only weeks after having introduced low-cost phone systems for smaller area retail and factory floors, the company has added interfaces to Northern Telecom and Comdial systems.VLSI Tech fields PC-audio-playback chip setThe movement to convert home PCs into interactive game machines with enough dramatic sound and image quality to rival a military flight simulator has spurred frantic competition among PC-sound-chip makers. Seeking to leapfrog its competition and stake a claim in the PC-audio playback market, VLSI Technology Inc. next week will announce one of the first audio chip sets to implement truly three-dimensional sound positioning.Lucent ups FPGA densityLucent Techno logies has marched further into unchartered programmable-logic territory with the unveiling of an updated FPGA architecture that company engineers said will scale to 325,000 usable gates in a few years.
Monday, October 28, 1996FAA sets massive systems overhaul, but will it fly?On a recent October morning, a maintenance snafu at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport set off a series of events that stoked the debate on the integrity of the nation's quarter-century-old air-traffic-control infrastructure. A crew servicing a power-conditioning system triggered an electrical surge, knocking out the Phoenix terminal's radar approach-control system. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the computers were down for 8 seconds; it took a few minutes to get flight-path data back on the radar scopes. But industry sources who track such incidents said the outage lasted over an hour.On-ch ip DRAM trend powers performanceIC vendors are poised to pack large amounts of DRAM onto custom chips to speed system-level integration. Last week, Samsung, SGS-Thomson, Siemens, TSMC and Texas Instruments all tipped plans to offer embedded DRAM, making the announcements here at the sixth annual Future Horizons' European Electronics Forum .Intel, Microsoft re-think multimdia PC, launch separate initiativesIntel and Microsoft will deliver a one-two multimedia punch next month during the week of Comdex, when they unveil separate -- but strikingly similar -- strategic initiatives aimed at reshaping the PC into an interactive triple-threat powered by MMX-enhanced processors, digital-videodisk (DVD) players and DirectX application-programming interfaces.Software explosion rattles car makersAutomakers, faced with runaway growth in the lines of code their engineers must write and ma nage as microprocessors take over automotive functions, are steering toward object-oriented programming and code reuse. But the consensus among panel participants at last week's Convergence conference here was that, particularly in the United States, adoption of open software standards and off-the-shelf operating systems for automotive electronics will come with some assurances that drivers themselves won't be able to alter critical code.ITU effort eyes mobile video phoneIt probably won't bear much resemblance to Dick Tracy's picture-phone wristwatch, but the mobile videophone could soon move out of the comics and onto the streets. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has sketched out a format for videoconferencing using cellular-phone carriers and is working toward a standard.
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