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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 22, 1996Push on to test chips with embedded DRAMA handful of EDA and automatic test equipment vendors are preparing technologies and methods to test embedded DRAM on chips that also integrate logic. Early from the chute is Logic Vision, a young company here that specializes in built-in self test (BIST) technology. In addition, nine-year-old HPL Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.) said it has developed and deployed BIST capabilities for DRAM and flash.NEC develops 25-Mbit wireless LANWireless local-area networks are struggling to overcome the twin challenges of high cost and 2-Mbit/second speed. Looking to the day when video will be sent over these networks, NEC Corp. has developed a 25-Mbit/s wireless LAN, packaged in two PCMCIA cards.Corporate design automation is here to stayCorporate CAD groups that design in-house tools are here to stay, according to a panel at the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD), held here Nov. 11-13. That's an about-face from the situation earlier this decade, when prevailing opinion said electronic design automation (EDA) companies were rendering proprietary in-house tools obsolete.Siemens picks SyncLink interface over RambusSiemens Semiconductor, the only European power in the DRAM market, has decided to place its long-term bets on the SyncLink interface, instead of Rambus. The move may reflect the systems needs of European vendors, heavily influenced by Siemens Nixdorf and European telecom giants, rather than the needs of the U.S. and Asian personal-computer industries.Motive analyzer gains STM supportFurther ev idence of industry support for ASIC sign-off on static-timing analysis came last week, as Viewlogic Systems Inc. and SGS-Thomson Microelectronics (STM; Agrate, Italy) disclosed that they are jointly developing libraries for Viewlogic's Motive timing analyzer.
Thursday, November 21, 1996Sun to cut cost, boost performance of JavaStation network computerSun Microsystems Inc. has rolled out a soup-to-nuts smorgasbord of products and partners supporting its JavaStation thin client, including a book of some 450 Java applications in development and 10 beta site end-users. But despite attempts to position itself as a complete solutions provider for network computers (NC), Sun's hardware and software products for this new paradigm remain a work in progress with many missing pieces.Small controller cores get big play in EuropeA U.K. company that is tailoring its 16-bit XAP RISC core for smart telephones was among the European firms and research organizations exhibiting continued innovation in small RISC cores at the Electronica show here this month.Ricoh samples CD-RW drivesFollowing the firming up last month of a rewritable CD standard, Ricoh Co. Ltd. has started producing a CD-RW drive and is sampling devices.Input device 'reads' gesturesMitsubishi Electric Corp. has developed a low-cost input device that is claimed to recognize human gestures and convert them into commands for use by application programs. Based on an "artificial retina" IC and a proprietary vision algorithm, the device will initially be sold as an input tool for gameplay but is expected to find eventual application in sports equipment, tools used by people with disabilities, and various other digital consumer products.Drive vendors push n otebooks, high endSystem engineers who came to Comdex/Fall to scope out the sexy new drive designs found offerings that break ground in height, rotational speed and data-transfer times. The groundbreakers included a 9.5-mm-tall 2.5-inch drive from IBM, a 10,000-rpm drive from Seagate Technology and an Ultra ATA interface product from Quantum.
Wednesday, November 20, 1996Economist sees upturn in chip sales by 2000Despite a brutal downturn this year for semiconductors, the industry can still reach $300 billion in sales in the year 2000 in a market fueled by demand for specialized chips, according to projections by the chief economist at SGS-Thomson Microelectronics.Giddy over gigabotsCan Gideon Gartner do it again, this time with the Internet as a partner? The founder of the famed Gartner Group Inc. (Stamford, Conn.) is floating a new venture that would have intelligent software agents called "Gigabots" prowling the Net for customized client information.Process builds silicon RF chipsUsing standard CMOS processing, researchers from the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) and RF Microsystems Inc. have developed small, on-chip coplanar waveguides that they say may provide a route to practical low-cost integrated microwave systems. The project has demonstrated 50-ý coplanar waveguides fabricated entirely in CMOS.SPIE show highlights wide influence of optical engineeringWhile the electronics industry is flexing its muscle at Comdex this week, the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) is blitzing Boston with its multifaceted Photonics East show, revealing the extent to which optical engineering has penetrated every aspect of modern industry.Pure Atria bids $43M to buy Integrity QAPure Atria Inc., the software quality-checking powerhouse formed through the merger of Pure Software and Atria Software, said it intends to acquire Integrity QA (Campbell, Calif.) in a combined stock-cash offering worth approximately $43 million. Integrity QA, a startup formed by former Borland International executives, develops software test tools for Windows NT servers and Web sites based on a variety of operating systems.
Tuesday, November 19, 1996HP, others, unveil crypto frameworkIndustry heavyweights announced a government approved encryption framework Monday, designed to break the stalemate over U.S. cryto exports and make the Internet safe for electronic commerce.EDO DRAM family targets multitaskingThe IBM manufacturing facility in Essex Junction, Vt., is churning out 12-ns, 512k x 8-bit multibank, extended data output (EDO) a nd burst EDO DRAMs for Enhanced Memory Systems Inc. The devices use a multibank architecture to segment the memory into four DRAM banks and four SRAM cache banks, for a higher hit-rate in multitasking applications.Epsilon tech aids Accolade's FPGA optimizerNew FPGA optimization technology that promises improvements in area, device performance and run-times is now available as part of Accolade Design Automation Inc.'s Peak-FPGA synthesis product. The offering brings to market the Logic Compressor technology developed by startup Epsilon Design Systems Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.).Sony tunes in codec for videoconferenceEngineers at Sony Technology Center of Sony Electronics Inc. have developed a videoconferencing system that integrates a programmable DSP engine and a telephony ISDN interface within a Sony Trinitron display monitor.Eicon board p uts analog fax, modem on ISDNWhile several ISDN terminal-adapter vendors are offering cards with analog telephony support, Eicon Technology Corp. can claim something new in its Diva Pro series.
Monday, November 18, 1996Digital set-top ICs the rage in EuropeThe digital set-top box may be going nowhere fast in the U.S. market, but it's become the focus of a massive design effort across the Atlantic. European broadcasters and global content providers are gearing up to leverage the European Community's planned 1998 deregulation of the telecom industry. The expected windfall of set-top silicon design slots in second-generation boxes has U.S., Japanese and European chip vendors scrambling to gauge requirements and turn around samples by the second quarter.Gigabit alternative to Firewire forces rethinking of bus strategiesComdex opens here this week in the midst o f an interface flap over two incompatible standards that already have computer and peripheral vendors rethinking bus strategies, well in advance of the standards' arrival. As those backing the IEEE 1394 spec demonstrate their maiden products on the show floor, they'll also be brandishing a freshly minted road map to counter confusion over a potential competitor with a similar name: IEEE 1394.2.Museum shows how we won the Code War -- spywork with computersNestled in a far corner of the sprawling headquarters of the National Security Agency here is a nondescript building whose contents document a century of spycraft that changed the course of history. A central figure in the story is the computer -- or, more correctly, its forerunners, mammoth number-crunching machines that paved the way for the supercomputers of today.Mentor buys three 'soft' core intellectual property companiesIn what ma y be the most comprehensive approach yet taken by a major EDA vendor toward the burgeoning intellectual-property (IP) market, Mentor Graphics Corp. (Wilsonville, Ore.) last week announced the purchase of three "soft" core providers and the establishment of its Inventra business unit. In addition to soft, or synthesizable, cores, Inventra will represent hard cores and physical IC and board libraries.Carriers lay heavy bets on broadband infrastructureBroader demand for full-service networks that combine Internet, interactive video and voice telephony are placing heavy financial constraints on local-loop infrastructures. The demands are forcing local telephone exchange carriers and CATV multiservice operators to bet large amounts of money on profits that may never materialize.NEC develops DVD camera that stores 8.2 Gbytes per diskNEC Corp. engineers are developing a prototype digit al-video-disk camera for professional use that nearly doubles the capacity goals of other DVD systems. It is expected to hit the market in about a year.CPU vendors gear up for Java languageConcerned that Sun's Java language may become common in set-top boxes and network computers, CPU vendors are scrambling to get reasonable performance from Java Bytecode. Some are considering Sun's picoJava processor core, while others are simply keeping open the option of faster CPUs. But some major CPU-core vendors are developing Java accelerator coprocessors. At Electronica here, Temic Telefunken microelectronic GmbH (Heilbronn, Germany) announced a Sparclet CPU with a Java coprocessor. And EE Times has learned that SGS-Thomson and Siemens are actively evaluating similar designs.
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