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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, December 20, 1996Samsung shuffles managersThe Samsung Group, where profits are under pressure from a collapse in DRAM prices, sent Samsung Electronics Corp. CEO Kwang-Ho Kim to the United States to oversee its overall group operations in North America.
Rockwell acquires wireless-chip group from CirrusIn an $18 million cash deal, Rockwell Semiconductor Systems acquired a major toehold last week in Japan's Personal Handyphone System (PHS) market by purchasing the wireless semiconductor products group of Pacific Communications Sciences Inc. (PCSI), a subsidiary of Cirrus Logic Inc.
Bay Networks acquires NetICsBay Networks Inc. has acquired NetICs Inc. (Acton, Mass.), a startup focused on F ast Ethernet switching ASICs. Bay will exchange a combination of $55 million of its common stock and up to $44 million in cash for all of NetICs' assets.
DVD-RAM, MO7 set for optical-drive format face-offSpecifications are now being nailed down for competing 12-cm rewritable optical- drive formats, setting the stage for a marketplace face-off. The DVD-RAM is based on phase-change technology endorsed by the DVD consortium, and the MO7 is a magneto-optical system with a capacity of 6 to 7 gigabytes.
Thursday, December 19, 1996Duet to purchase CrosscheckEDA services provider Duet Technologies Inc. has announced its intent to purchase CrossCheck Technology, which licenses an on-chip testability architecture to semiconductor vendors.
Telcos look to expand abroadWith deregulation of the U.S. telecommunication m arket under way, equipment makers are looking to tap emerging international markets for wireless and other new services.A series of international trade accords, including the Information Technology Agreement, are expected to help U.S. telecom firms gain a foothold in Asia and other markets in the coming year.
Argonaut sets up U.S. RISC-core subsidiaryArgonaut Software Ltd., developer of PC games software and graphics rendering processors, has created a U.S. subsidiary, Argonaut RISC Cores Inc., to bring to market the Argonaut RISC Core, the extensible 32-bit RISC processor core unveiled this summer.
B-Tree broadens focus of its verification toolsA company that hopes to make a name for itself in a broader marketplace, has started off by broadening its name. B-Tree Systems, formerly B-Tree Verification Systems, also brought in new marketing executives as it tries to move beyond its medical base into the broader embedded-systems market.
Wednesday, December 18, 1996Startup eyes reconfigurable computingA company spun out of Oxford University's Computing Laboratory (Comlab) hopes to capitalize on the lab's research into hardware compilation and reconfigurable computing. The company is targeting industrial and instrumentation applications where reconfiguration may be necessary but volumes are small and suited to FPGA hardware.
Struggling Weitek enters Chapter 11Weitek Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, ending its struggle to keep up with the accelerating graphics and multimedia market.
Moore lays down the law -- once againGiven the opportunity to change his mind last week, Intel chairman Gordon Moore stuck to the forecast he first propounded before an IEDM a udience in 1965.
Taiwan forms own IC industry groupTo provide a common Taiwanese voice in the planned World Semiconductor Council, Taiwan's IC industry recently created the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA).
TMA, Epic to partner on DFM capabilityTechnology Modeling Associates (TMA) and Epic Design Technology (Santa Clara, Calif.) have agreed to develop a design-for-manufacturing capability that they say will let designers directly model the impact of process variations on circuit timing.
Tuesday, December 17, 1996Cable-modem spec gets mixed receptionThe unveiling of draft specs for "Data Over Cable System Interfaces" by the Multimedia Cable Network Systems (MCNS) coalition at last week's Western Cable show was supposed to bring interoperability to cable-modem hardware world. But ind ustry experts reached at the show said that the specs may allow too much wiggle room.
Time Warner plans large digital set-top-box purchaseTime Warner Cable last week surprised the industry by unveiling a bullish plan to purchase 1 million units of advanced digital set-tops over the next three years.Selected for Time Warner Cable's project, called "Pegasus," as set-top suppliers are Scientific-Atlanta Inc. (Norcross, Ga.), Pioneer New Media Technologies Inc. (Long Beach, Calif.) and Toshiba.
Aspect-ratio dispute muddies digital TV dealBackers of a compromise deal on digital TV specifications are urging regulators to quickly ratify the deal and to handle a lingering dispute over aspect ratios separately.
Harris will start 8-in. wafers at new facilityHarris Corp.'s Semiconductor sector intends to be the first power semiconductor maker to manufacture on 8-inch wafers, having recently completed a wafer fabrication facility here under a construction program named Project Raptor. The fab will be dedicated to MOSFET devices and insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs).
Terayon tips CDMA modem trial resultsTerayon Corp. last week announced successful results from a field trial conducted to prove out its new cable modem technology, reporting that even in the noisiest of cable environments its transmissions were better than 98 percent error-free.
Monday, December 16, 1996Intel, Rambus ally on DRAM-interface specClaiming there is "a need for industry leadership" in DRAM-interface specifications, Intel Corp. confirmed last week that it is working with Rambus Corp. to develop a 1.6-Gbyte/second DRAM main-memory interface for personal computers.
Synopsys quits RTL-synthesis standards effortAn industry-wide effort to develop a standard, synthesizable register-transfer-level (RTL) subset hit a roadblock last week, as Synopsys Inc. announced a second patent for technology potentially covered by the subset standards and as it voiced its decision to stop participating in working groups.
360-degree video camera lets viewers direct the actionColumbia University School of Engineering professor Shree Nayar recently demonstrated a 360-degree-view video camera setup. OmniCam "sees" in all directions at once, while remaining completely stationary, enabling multiple viewers to "look" in different directions, at different magnifications, simultaneously.
Malaysian's coming on a technology shopping spreeMalaysian government and industry officials will arrive here in early January for a technology sh opping trip. The delegation is scheduled to visit high-tech companies in Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland and Florida in search of technologies needed for a proposed "smart city" project that promoters said could yield $800 million in U.S. technology exports.
Microsoft-led group boosts smart cardsThe nascent U.S. smart-card market got a needed boost last week, when a group of companies, led by Microsoft Corp., released information on a proposed standard for linking smart cards and card readers to personal computers.
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