Headlines and summaries from the pages of Electronic Engineering Times . Previous editions are available from the 1994 , 1995 , 1996 , 1997 , and 1998 News Archives.

01/12/96

IBM PDA/phone/cam palmtop taps PC cards for versatility

Loral sells defense arm

Crystal, SRS sign 3-D sound accord

Goggans on hacking: companies should beware inside job
What's new(s) at EE Times-interactive

01/11/96

Thomson leads charge to digital video

U.K. EDA startup propels PC Hilo

Quickturn, IBM sign pact

Remote access to PC networks is driving comm markets

Mass Optical makes case for rewritable optical drives

Vixel gets $11M to build VCSEL lasers

01/10/96

Handwriting recognition is greatly improved

Integrated p-channel JFET cuts resistor noise

Single-chip hydrocarbon sensor explored

High-voltage silicon-carbide rectifiers designed

01/09/96

No headlines for Tuesday

01/08/96

"Simple" interactive PC planned by Microsoft

RFP circulated for VRML 2.0, Internet's 3-D modeling language

In the wake of strong holiday PC sales, furrowed brows

NEC to be first into market for flat-panel displays for desktops

Moto Surfr Internet access heads home

Intel rolls Pentium at 150, 166 MHz

IBM PDA/phone/cam palmtop taps PC cards for versatility

By Junko Yoshida

LAS VEGAS -- IBM Corp. is readying a palmtop PC that combines a pager, digital still camera, portable phone, network client and PDA. The tiny (1.32-pound) 486SX/33-MHz-based 256-color unit drew big crowds at a sneak preview at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week.

Designed by IBM Japan, the IBM Palm Top PC 110 uses a lithium-ion battery and can run full PC functions based on the PC/AT architecture.

"We built something that is so portable, so versatile and yet fully functional as a PC," said Joe Takemura, advisory manager of strategi c mobile computing for worldwide strategic marketing at IBM Personal Computer Co. (Tokyo).

Simply by changing a PCMCIA card with different functionalities, the unit becomes one of several consumer products: PDA, FM radio, digital camera or portable phone.

A PCMCIA card slot houses two Type II cards or one Type III card. With 4 Mbytes of main memory, the unit has a 4-Mbyte storage space made possible by internal flash memory, and it supports PCMCIA boot.

Loral sells defense arm

By George Leopold and Loring Wirbel

BETHESDA, Md. -- The nation's largest military-electronics company grew even bigger, when Lockheed Martin Corp. announced it was swallowing parts of rival Loral Corp. in a move that could mark a new phase of U.S. defense-industry consolidation.

The deal frees Loral to shed its defense business and focus on Globalstar satellite communications. Observers expect the deal to be completed within three months after antitrust reviews.

The $10-billion merger adds breadth to the giant military-electronics and integration company's portfolio and creates a new space and communications company headed by New York-based Loral. Loral's defense operations will be folded into a new Lockheed Martin unit called Tactical Systems.

Annual sales should total $30 billion from aerospace, military and commercial programs. The merger is expected to give Lockheed Martin a commanding position in military integration; electronic combat; tactical missiles; data management; simulation and training; and command, control and communications programs.

With defense electronics one of the few bright spots in the Pentagon budget, Lockheed Martin is expected to slug it out for upgrade and modification contracts with Northrop Grumman--which recently bought Westinghouse's defense operations--and Hughes Aircraft. Hughes purchased Magnavox's defense unit last year.

Crystal, SRS sign 3-D sound accord

AUSTIN, Texas -- Crystal Semiconductor Corp. has signed a license agreement with SRS Labs Inc. (Santa Ana, Calif.), allowing Crystal to embed the SRS 3-D sound-retrieval system in upcoming audio chips. While the SRS technology has been licensed by OEMs ranging from Kenwood Corp. to NEC Technologies Inc., Crystal is the first semiconductor licensee with rights to sell chips using SRS algorithms.

SRS uses difference and sum-signal processing to create a 3-D sound location source with only two stereo speakers.

Goggans on hacking: companies should beware inside job

By Larry Lange

AUSTIN, Texas -- Hackers? You know the type: body-pierced, leather-outfitted teenage cyberpunks pounding away at their laptops, knocking out every LAN and WAN in their electronic pathway. But that may not be the case, says Chris Goggans (a.k.a. Erik Bloodaxe), former member of the notorious Legion of Doom and now a corporate-security consultant.

Goggans says most teen hackers are "more annoying than they are dangerous" and makes a clear distinction between the curious hacker, who's only in your system to "learn," and the computer criminal who logs on to raid your corporate larder.

A recent Ernst & Young/InformationWeek survey showed that more than half of the corporations surveyed reported electronic security-related financial losses in the past year; several reported losses exceeding $1 million. And most companies admit they don't have adequate tools or properly trained personnel to defend against information-security losses, which can run into the millions of dollars.

Goggans says that the real security problems are inside the firewall, not outside. "Someone who's going to target a specific company for a specific purpose is someone who doesn't fit the 'hacker' mold. He's going to be some one who has inside information."

Thomson leads charge to digital video

By Junko Yoshida

LAS VEGAS -- Unveiling a slew of digital video products at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, traditional consumer-electronics manufacturers of TVs, VCRs and audio equipment have made a clear proposition that television is alive and well and mutating endlessly.

Leading the revitalization today is Thomson Consumer Electronics (Indianapolis), a subsidiary of French giant Thomson Multimedia.

Thomson, which bet big on the U.S. digital satellite system (DSS) and has already staked out a lead in that market, is hurriedly designing prototypes of digitally converged consumer products. This time, DVD is the starting point for a new direction in consumer-electronics products and services.

Thomson executives eagerly sold the company's digital future, sketching out prototypes such as a large console-model color TV featuring a DVD drive for family net surfing in a living room, DVD interactive game machines, a portable DVD for business or pleasure travelers or a DVD with a touch-screen LCD combined with speaker phone and data modem for a kitchen.

In contrast to a remark made by Eckhard Pfeiffer, Compaq Computer Corp. president and CEO, in his CES keynote address, proposing the PC-centered digital revolution by installing a PC in every room of one's home, Thomson executives have painted the digital future where TV manufacturers are clearly back in the saddle to drive a variety of the next-generation consumer products on the market.

U.K. EDA startup propels PC Hilo

By Peter Clarke

SOUTHAMPTON, England -- A British. EDA startup, backed by Japan's Alps Corp., is pushing into the PC logic-simulation arena with ports of the System Hilo 4 simulator to run under Windows . Solang Ltd. here plans to increase its sales effort after a year of relying on System Hilo owner Veda Electronic Design Automation (Fareham, England) to boost Solang's exposure in the United States and Europe.

Formed by former employees of GenRad Design Automation Ltd. (Fareham) in 1994, Solang has just released a Windows 95 version of PC Hilo to complement Windows NT and 3.11 versions that were shipped to Alps LSI Technologies (ALT)--the IC development arm of Alps--last year. All three versions of PC Hilo are now available.

PC Hilo is a fully functional port of the System Hilo 4 workstation-based simulator offered originally by GenRad. Ownership of System Hilo passed to Veda, a management buyout of GenRad's Design Automation group, in mid-1994

David Blagden, managing director of Solang, said PC Hilo running on a 90-MHz Pentium PC is comparable to System Hilo 4 running on a Sparc 20 workstation. "It's a direct port, which means there's no difference in terms of memory or disk requirements. You c an do 5,000 gates on a small machine or 65 k gates on a 24-Mbyte PC," he said. "The System Hilo memory requirement is better than modern HDL simulators."

Quickturn, IBM sign pact

By Richard Goering

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Moving toward a custom-chip approach to logic emulation, Quickturn Design Systems has agreed with IBM to jointly develop next-generation logic-emulation systems. Quickturn will pay IBM an undisclosed sum for the development work and gain exclusive rights to market IBM's technology.

The pact signals a new direction for Quickturn, which has relied on Xilinx FPGAs to build logic-emulation systems. Two startup competitors--Arkos, which was acquired by Synopsys, and Meta Systems, which was acquired by Mentor Graphics--use custom chips instead of FPGAs and claim much faster compilation times.

But IBM's technology will augment rather than replace Quickturn's Xilinx- based System Realizer product line, said Keith Lobo, Quickturn president and CEO. "What IBM adds is the ability to handle very large and highly synchronous designs, primarily in the CPU area," he said.

Lobo said that IBM's Large Scale Computing division (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.) has been developing logic-emulation technology for some time and that it "exists in a form where capabilities can be demonstrated."

Remote access to PC networks is driving comm markets

By Margaret Ryan

NEW YORK -- Several network technologies that were considered emerging markets as recently as two years ago are rapidly coming into their own. Driving their adoption are the growth in the use of PCs and PC networks, the increased numbers of workers who are accessing corporate networks remotely, the demand for faster network communications, and the increased interest in on-line services and the Internet.

"The Asynchronous Transfer Mode WAN market is beginning to heat up," analysts at Wessels, Arnold & Henderson write in a reported titled "The Big Switch III." The report emphasizes a trend that has been visible for several months: ATM, which began life as a WAN technology when the International Telecommunications Union specified it as the bearer service for broadband ISDN, is finding its most important early deployments in the public network.

Between 1991 and 1994, OEM members of the ATM Forum that developed in customer-premises equipment had hoped that ATM would prove a near-term replacement for high-speed LANs. While that market still could prove important, the report argues that ATM's original target market, the WAN, is its most important venue for mid-decade growth.

John Coons, director and principal analyst of the ATM service group at Dataquest Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) agrees. According to Coon's estimates, total 1994 WAN ATM switch revenue totaled $131.2 million. In the first half of 1995 alone, AT M switch revenue for WANs totaled $126.3 million. The majority of that revenue--61 percent--was for carrier-edge switches. Enterprise switches generated 21 percent; carrier core switches accounted for 18 percent.

Mass Optical makes case for rewritable optical drives

By Loring Wirbel

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Three years ago this month, executives with Mass Optical Storage Technologies Inc. (Most) were fending off charges from the U.S. Congress that the sale of the business to Nakamichi Holdings would pose a security threat.

Today, having completed a management buyout of the business from Nakamichi, Most executives have another tough fight on their hands: proving they can market 5.25-inch rewritable optical drives in their own right. Most must not only show the viability of rewritable optical storage but must challenge such large players as Hitachi and Matsushita/Panasonic.

But Jim Kaufmann, vice president of marketing, said that Most's years of experience in manufacturing magneto-optical (M-O) heads for various vendors will serve the company well in manufacturing and marketing the Jupiter 1, a 2.6-Gbyte, quad-capacity optical drive.

At the end of October, the company reached the milestone of completing its 100,000th opto-mechanical assembly (OMA), manufactured in Colorado Springs.

Vixel gets $11M to build VCSEL lasers

BROOMFIELD, Colo. -- Optoelectronics startup Vixel Corp. will use $11.2 million in equity financing to introduce a suite of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) products at the Optical Fiber Conference next month. Vixel has attracted attention from a range of telecom-switch vendors, including Alcatel, and customer-premises equipment OEMs, like Cisco Systems Inc.

What's more, Granite Systems has expressed interest in using the VCS EL modules in new gigabit Ethernet products, said Andy Bechtolshiem, former Sun Microsystems founder and president of Granite Systems.

Vixel president Greg Olbright said that the company's acquisition of a Boulder, Colo., gallium-arsenide facility formerly owned by Bandgap Corp. would allow Vixel to compete in VCSELs with such big players as Motorola, Hewlett-Packard and Honeywell.

Handwriting recognition is greatly improved

By R. Colin Johnson

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Handwriting recognition's high error rate, sluggish response time and voracious appetite for computing resources have put it on a slow-growth curve. But new software technologies for pen-input-handprinting recognition are attacking those problems, offering higher speed, higher accuracy and have-it-your-way character shaping.

Handprinting recognition--that is, recognition of individually printed, rather than cursive, c haracters--offers reasonable trade-offs between user-training time (ranging from 15 minutes to several days) and accuracy (ranging up to 100 percent). Palm Computing Inc. (Los Altos, Calif.) claimed 100 percent accuracy for its early entry, the Graffiti pen-based handprinting recognizer. To achieve such accuracy, however, Graffiti users must learn and employ a simplified, one-stroke-per-character alphabet (see May 22, 1995, page 42 ). The system thus shifts responsibility for errors from the recognition engine to the user, who is expected to render the abbreviated characters accurately.

Now, two handprinting-recognition engines have been announced that are at opposite ends of the character-shape spectrum. Freestyle, from ParaGraph International (Campbell, Calif.), dispenses with the one-stroke-per-character restriction by learning any user-supplied character shapes. Gesture Mosaic, from Mosaic Input Technologies (McFarland, Wis.), requires users to learn a maximally abbreviated set of character shapes and thus involves the longest learning curve, but it also promises the fastest recognition rate.

Integrated p-channel JFET cuts resistor noise

By Gail Robinson

BROOKHAVEN, N.Y. -- High-performance radiation detectors can play an important role in precisely measuring the energy of photons in X-ray spectroscopy systems.

The high-sensitivity detector arrays are built on silicon wafers and, while there are benefits to integrating transistors--such as n-channel JFETs--into the radiation detector, there can be limitations. For example, to reset the charge collected at the anode, a large resistor--a few G_--is designed into the feedback path of a charge preamplifier. But, the resistor can create noise--a significant drawback when resolution has to be below certain limits and electric noise needs to be decreased to extremely low levels.

Another option uses pulsed reset systems but th ey require complex timing and high reset rate to discharge high leakage current.

After several years of collaboration, testing and design, researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory here have combined efforts with labs in Germany and Italy to try a new approach: embedding a p-channel JFET in the collecting anode of a silicon radiation detector.

The work has let researchers integrate several transistor/detector combinations. Using a p-channel instead of an n-channel JFET, the design eliminates a resistor and performs reset continuously, without extra electronics.

Single-chip hydrocarbon sensor explored

By Chappell Brown

PASADENA, Calif. -- The ability of silicon-carbide circuits to operate over a wide range of temperatures is being exploited in a novel project to build a single-chip hydrocarbon sensor at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) here. Conceived by JPL scienti st Virgil Shields, a critical aspect of the sensing operation is a high-temperature "catalysis" of the hydrocarbons that is required to obtain a unique signature. By building a field-emitting transistor (FET) where the channel region is porous silicon carbide, the new design will be able to integrate sensing functions with additional electronics to produce an integrated probe for detecting hydrocarbons.

The principle of operation is simple: Ions produced during the catalysis of a given hydrocarbon collect in the porous layer under the gate, affecting the characteristic I-V curve of the FET by adding a unique proportion of ions. Sensor circuitry simply scans the FET at a range of voltages and identifies a particular compound by recognizing its unique I-V curve. A first demonstration of the technique has been accomplished with a simplified diode structure, where a porous silicon carbide layer on top of 6 H silicon carbide forms a junction.

High-voltage silicon-carbide rectifiers designed

By Gail Robinson

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Researchers at the Power Semiconductor Research Center at North Carolina State University have designed Schottky barrier diodes with breakdown voltages ranging up to 1,000 V. According to the researchers, the diodes, fabricated with the 4-hexagonal (4H) polytype of silicon carbide, offer excellent I-V characteristics and a forward drop voltage of 1.1 Va significant improvement over similar devices built with 6H material.

In addition, the diodes have a low specific on-resistance, of 2 x 10-3 _/cm2 at room temperature--that varies only slightly with temperature. The characteristics, which are expected to hold up at high temperatures, may prove especially useful in automotive applications, such as electric-vehicle drive trains and motor and numerical control, as well as in aircraft electronics and space systems.

"It allows for a very significant reduction in powe r losses--up to a factor of 10, depending on the application--so you can reduce the size of your heat sink," said Jayant Baliga, director of the Power Semiconductor Research Center. "And because you can run your system at higher frequencies, you can also reduce the size of your passive components."

No headlines for Tuesday

Newsgathering operations suspended due to blizzard in Northeast

"Simple" interactive PC planned by Microsoft

By Alexander Wolfe

REDMOND, Wash. -- Microsoft Corp. has quietly launched an ambitious multipronged strategy to create the "Simply Interactive PC"--an information appliance with streamlined Windows-based multimedia interfaces that is far simpler to program than existing systems and which can be sold into a broad array of markets ranging from the home to business and mobile users.

First word of the effort--envisioned by Microsoft as "the platform for the next generation of connected, interactive uses" and "the center of interactivity and communications," according to company documents--came at a closed design preview for selected hardware developers hosted recently in Seattle by Carl Stork, a director of Microsoft's personal systems division. A high-profile public announcement is expected at the WinHEC conference in San Jose, Calif., in April, according to sources close to Microsoft.

Two crucial technologies will drive the Simply Interactive PC. The first--low-latency audio--is essentially a collection of interfaces that facilitate access to fast, kernel-mode services in the Windows operating system. These would enable software to be written for the emerging generation of DSVD (digital simultaneous voice and data) modems, which Microsoft views as an important driver of future on-line entertainment and PC-based video conference applications. L ow-latency audio will also support a MIDI (musical instrument device interface) connection, easing the generation of CD-ROM-style audio.

The second key technology, a new Windows device-driver specification called the Win32 driver model (WDM), will bring a touch of object-oriented technology to Microsoft's operating systems. The objective is to create a "universal" driver that will make it easier for developers to tailor their software for different sound cards, modems and accelerators. That is significant because it will allow developers that have invested heavily in servicing the Windows 95 market to readily move up to Windows NT, something many vendors have been eager to do as the OS gains ground.

The new PC will drive Windows 95 from its current design, consisting of a mix of 16- and 32-bit software, to a new, all-32-bit code base scheduled for release next year. Indeed, Microsoft is planning major new releases of both Windows NT and Windows 95 in 1997.

Fu ll story.

RFP circulated for VRML 2.0, Internet's 3-D modeling language

By Brian Santo

SAN FRANCISCO -- The VRML Architecture Group (VAG), the ad hoc group shepharding the development of the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), has issued a request for proposals (RFP) for the second revision of the language.

VRML is used to describe virtual worlds networked via the global Internet and hyperlinked through World Wide Web. The first revision of VRML, based upon Silicon Graphics' Open Inventor, served as a common scene-description language which has now been accepted as the standard for 3D communication on the Internet.

According to VAG, "VRML must grow again, to enable a new generation of scaleable, interactive, high-performance applications. As part of this growth process, the VRML Architecture Group and the membership of the www-vrml mailing list are now issuing a call for proposals which will be considered as candidates for the next major revision of VRML."

Possible VRML 2.0 candidates include Microsoft's recently announced Active VRML, an implementation from Sun Microsystems, another from Apple called 3DMF VRML, and the Moving Worlds proposal being developed by several members of the small VRML community. Proposals are due February 2.

For more information, including requirements for VRML 2.0 and instructions on how to respond to the RFP, see http://vag.vrml.org/rfp.html .

In the wake of strong holiday PC sales, furrowed brows

By Margaret Ryan and Brian Fuller

NEW YORK -- Despite strong holiday sales of personal computers, the electronics business has downshifted into 1996 on concerns about overly optimistic demand projections and capacity expansions.

A number of companies in recent weeks have "pre-an nounced" earnings, warning analysts that their profit expectations were too high. And stock-market analysts have steadily downgraded technology stocks--the most recent being the semiconductor equipment sector--to reflect the increasing pessimism for 1996.

All this is played out next to the fine print on the growth in the PC market, which is responsible for upwards of half of all silicon vendors' revenues: the market may just be flat saturated, particularly in the home sector.

Still, analysts are sticking to their forecasts for 1996: semiconductor market growing of about 25 percent. The problem is that is way down from the heady 40 to 45 percent that is expected when all the numbers for 1995 are in.

"The problem is that visibility isn't what it was a year ago, when you knew how business was going to be maybe two quarters out," said one silicon company executive who asked not to be identified. "There are doubts about capacity coming on, doubts about memory pricing."

NEC to be first into market for flat-panel displays for desktops

By David Lieberman

WOOD DALE, Ill. -- On Jan. 22, NEC Technologies Inc. will introduce a pair of active-matrix LCD monitors for the desktop computer market, the first high-volume monitor manufacturer to commit to a flat-panel-display monitor line. Now that the laptop computer market is saturating, AM LCD vendors are starting to scramble to find homes for their excess manufacturing capacity, and the NEC move is most likely just the first of many.

Like the CRTs conventionally used on the desktop, the 12- and 13-inch-diagonal AM LCDs in the MultiSync LCD200 and MultiSync LCD300 monitors, made by sister company NEC Electronics Inc., provide analog color capabilities, not the more familiar 6-bit digital color of most laptop-computer AM LCDs. And like desktop CRTs, the LCD monitors can sync up with virtually any PC graphics card, a capability NEC pioneered in CRT monitors 10 years ago.

With these two CRT-like capabilities, NEC expects the new monitors to more easily displace CRTs on the desktop than existing low-volume specialty AM LCD monitors, whose prices the company claims to be undercutting by about 45 percent. Yet, with estimated street prices of $3,999 and $5,999, the monitors still command a painful premium, roughly 10 times the price of comparable CRT monitors.

Moto Surfr Internet access heads home

By Loring Wirbel

LAS VEGAS -- Motorola Inc.'s Information Systems Group is extending its "Surfr" Internet-access series to a home-computing market based on analog modems. At last week's Consumer Electronics show, Motorola introduced OnlineSurfr, ModemSurfr and VoiceSurfr, all targeted at a home-PC market where Internet newcomers are looking for street prices as low as $99.

The Surfr strategy began a year ago with the BitSurfr ISDN te rminal-adapter line from ISG's Mansfield, Mass., division and was augmented with analog products from the Huntsville, Ala., ISG group in midyear. The branding became a corporate-wide effort in the fall, as the Schaumburg, Ill., cable-TV access group introduced CyberSurfr, a cable-modem product.

"Originally, we wanted people to think ISDN when they heard Surfr," said Earl Turner, product marketing manager for analog modems in Motorola's Huntsville group. "The notion of Internet surfing became so popular, though, that this has become a corporatewide name."

Two products use Motorola internally developed V.34 (28.8- kbit/second) modems, while the VoiceSurfr uses a slower V.32bis (14.4-kbit/s) modem, combined with the VoiceView protocols from Radish Communications Inc. (Boulder, Colo.). The company is expanding its retail-outlet channels and is offering a toll-free number--(800) 4-A-MODEM)--and Web site (http://www.mot.com/MIMS/ISG/) to increase public awareness of the consumer products. Turner said that t he real difference for a consumer Internet market, however, was not the modem hardware but the software bundles.

Intel rolls Pentium at 150, 166 MHz

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Intel Corp. cranked up the clock on the Pentium processor family last week with the introduction of 150- and 166-MHz versions.

Made in Intel's 0.35-micron, 3.3-V process, the devices target the high end of the PC market and allow 133-MHz Pentium systems to move into the mainstream of desktop computing.

The 166-MHz version offers 4.76 SPECint95 and 3.37 SPECfp95 performance specs. The 150-MHz Pentium delivers 4.27 SPECint95 and 3.04 SPECfp95.

In volume, the 150-MHz Pentium costs $547, and the 166-MHz version $749.

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