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

02/02/96

Quickturn claims Mentor, Meta are violating its patents

ComNet '96: ATM deployment gathers steam

DSP resources put on tap

Calluna previews half-Gbyte 1.8-inch drives

High-end IC tester shrinks price, footprint
What's new(s) at EE Times-interactive

02/01/96

6X86 IBM, Cyrix take on Pentium with 6X86

Taiwan hears the call of the 'network computer'

TI teams with Go on Windows DSP environment

HDL numbers in dispute

Solectron acquires TI's CMS group

01/31/96

Computer engineering jobs to surge 6% yearly through 2005

Nat'l Instrument overhauls virtual-instrument packages

NFS servers upgraded

Cell-phone software offered

IBM opens CMOS 5X to net-lists

01/30/96

Zoom video hits Cardbus

Speedy vector processor relies on basic MOSFET trait

Sunny forecast for consumer-level solar energy generation

Handhelds get their own PC cards: Minicards

The puck's the thing: how Fox Sports did it

Zilog DSP core acts as MCU

01/29/96

Microsoft raises bar with 3-D software

Japan says sayonara to trade pact

The $500 net box: Is it hype or hope?

Broadcasters defend right to free spectrum

Worried about Sun takeover? Not software-rich Apple lab

Pentium-based multichip module coming for notebooks

Quickturn claims Mentor, Meta are violating its patents

By Richard Goering

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- In a far-reaching case that could shape the future of the logic-emulation business, market leader Quickturn Design Systems has filed a patent-infringement complaint against Mentor Graphics Corp. (Wilsonville, Ore.) and Meta Systems, a French emulation company that Mentor is in the process of acquiring (search our archive for story, Dec. 18, 1995, page 1). Quickturn is asking the International Trade Commission (ITC) to enjoin Mentor from importing and selling Meta Systems products.

At issue is whether Quickturn will continue to hold its near-monopoly on the IC-emulation business--estimated by Dataquest at 90 percent in 1994--in the face of new competition from Mentor, Synopsys, Zycad, Aptix and Virtual Machine Works. The fast-growing emulation sector is viewed as essential for the verification of complex ICs and ASICs.

Quickturn is charging Meta Systems, which so far has sold its SimExpress emulation tools only in France, with violating five hardware patents. Ironically, one of those was purchased from Mentor in 1992. Anticipating Quickturn's action, Mentor quietly filed suit in San Jose, Calif., in December seeking to overturn three of the patents in question.

With some 14 hardware and software patents already approved and another 26 in the pipeline, Quickturn is one of the most aggressive EDA vendors when it comes to patent protection. In 1992, Quickturn sued PiE Design Systems, its only significant competitor, for patent violations; that suit ended when Quickturn purchased PiE.

ComNet '96: ATM deployment gathers steam

By George Leopold and Alexander Wolfe

WASHINGTON -- Growing ATM deployment was the catchphrase at this week's ComNet '96 conference here, as vendors touted their latest switches and boasted of alliances with telecommunications providers.

Though asynchronous transfer mode has been slow to move into the mainstream, the flurry of announcements at ComNet presaged brightened prospects on two fronts. For one, continued growth in Web and Internet demand is prompting several Internet-access providers to begin implementing ATM backbone networks. Among them are Netcom, UUNet and Performance Systems International.

Separately, regional phone companies are finally installing ATM equipment, convinced there is a market for the service--even if it's primarily as a supplement to high-speed frame-relay.

"We see [ATM] being deployed a little bit at a time," said one analyst, initially as a backbone and ultimately as part of a full-service network. Indeed, market researchers International Data Corp. estimate the ATM switch market reached $83.7 million in the first half of 1995.

Internet access and phone-company moves toward ATM were much in evidence at ComNet, as several vendors pitched new ATM-switch offerings.

DSP resources put on tap

By Ashok Bindra

FREMONT, Calif.-- Engineers seeking on-line information on digital signal processing are served by an increasing number of World Wide Web pages, offered by DSP-chip and -tool vendors as well as by such commercial services as DSPnet. Now, market-research and consulting firm Berkeley Design Technology Inc. (BDT) has joined the fray with a Web-site compendium of original papers on DSP processors, cores, development tools and benchmarks, with hyperlinks to other DSP resources on the Web.

BDT is betting that its site will help it market its two annual reports: the "Buyer's Guide to DSP Processors" and "DSP Design Tools and Methodologies." The reports provide in-depth evaluation of DSP chips, tools, software and design techniques. It further hopes the site will help promote its consulting ser vices to the engineering community worldwide.

The consulting firm is also preparing two additional DSP reports, focusing on DSP cores and power-consumption levels for low-power processors. Also in the works is a book that will be a practical introduction to DSPs.

Besides its own reports, BDT sells the Forward Concepts Inc. (Tempe, Ariz.) worldwide DSP-chip-market study "DSP Strategies for the '90s."

Calluna previews half-Gbyte 1.8-inch drives

By Rick Boyd-Merritt

GLENROTHES, Scotland -- Trying to pack half-gigabyte capacity into a 1.8-inch form factor, Calluna Technology Ltd. has announced early details of its next-generation pocket-sized hard-disk drives. Indeed, the race for ever higher capacities has kept this niche market a competitive one, despite the loss of such early players as Mini-Stor and the Hewlett-Packard Kitty Hawk group.

Calluna has tapped the power of partia l-response, maximum- likelihood read channels for its pending 510-Mbyte callunacard. The 10.5-mm-thick Type III PC card will carry three platters and six heads. Calluna intends to spin 340-Mbyte and 170-Mbyte versions that will use two platters and one, respectively. All three models will be the company's first to use PRML read channels.

The drives, Calluna's first to adopt a fluid-fiber motor technology used by drive makers such as Maxtor, use a glass-like carbon fiber material for the platters that Calluna first employed in drives it launched last year.

All the new drives will continue to be 5-V devices. "We thought about coming out with some 3-V drives," said Bruce Serpa, sales manager in Calluna's San Jose office, "but our customers kept asking for more performance and capacity, not lower power consumption."

High-end IC tester shrinks price, footprint

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Schlumberg er ATE Division's SX series, starting with the SX 100 VLSI logic-test system, aims to set new standards in pricing and size but approaches top-of-the-line testers in performance.

The 100-MHz SX 100 offers configurations that penetrate the $5,000/pin price barrier but that stream data at up to 200 MHz (multiplexed) and squeeze into an 11-square-foot footprint. That makes the SX 100 one of the smallest non-benchtop ATE systems around--a particularly important aspect for the Asian test market, where floor space is at a premium.

The target chips for the new Schlumberger entry include complex microcontrollers, embedded processors, chip sets, multimedia chips and networking devices.

"Cost of ownership is becoming the dominant theme in some segments of the market," said Dave Karpenske, vice president of Schlumberger ATE. "To satisfy that need--and to compete with the likes of a Credence or Hewlett-Packard--we've put much of the technology and performance of our 100-MHz FX into a machine that does not c ompromise timing capability, pattern-generation flexibility, accuracy, speed and other important parameters."

6X86 IBM, Cyrix take on Pentium with 6X86

By Ron Wilson

RICHARDSON, Texas -- As Cyrix Corp. and IBM Microelectronics officially roll out the 6X86 microprocessor--formerly the Cyrix M1-- next Monday, they turn the page on a chapter of technological headaches. But the very next page holds a business problem potentially more challenging than the technical ones.

The problem is a matter of brand recognition. "We aren't offering just a value proposition anymore," claimed Cyrix vice president of corporate marketing Steve Tobak. "We are going right up against the Pentium, with a part that has superior performance. We have to change the issue on which we are recognized from value to performance."

The companies face two brand-re cognition problems at once, acknowledged IBM Microelectronics business unit director Kenneth Torino. First, neither the Cyrix name nor the IBM name is associated with high-performance CPUs at the retail level. IBM is known for systems, and Cyrix is recognized--if at all--for discount prices.

Second is the problem of establishing a performance point in the customer's mind. Unfortunately, both Tobak and Torino said, retail PC buyers have associated MHz with performance--an association that Intel has not necessarily discouraged.

That prejudice penalizes the sophisticated M1 architecture and benefits the older, far simpler Pentium. The M1, because of its four-issue superscalar design, executes more instructions per clock, on average, than the dual-issue Pentium. Thus, even after the realities of old, poorly written code and slow memory systems are taken into account, the 6X86 CPU will outperform the Pentium P54 CPUs at the same clock frequency. Or, to look at it from the retailer's point of view, a 133-MH z Pentium system may not be as fast as a 110-MHz 6X86 system.

"There is the problem," Tobak said. "We may win on honest benchmarks, but if we quote clock frequency, we lose."

Taiwan hears the call of the 'network computer'

By David Lammers

HSINCHU CITY, Taiwan -- The $500 network computer (NC) is gaining support among Taiwan's computer and semiconductor manufacturers. The government-funded Computer and Communications Laboratory (CCL) is setting up an NC consortium among Taiwan's biggest personal-computer makers, and semiconductor companies are starting to define the necessary ICs.

Systems should be ready for sale by Christmas, said Steven S. Cheng, general director of the CCL.

With tens of millions of Asians eager to surf the Net but unsure how to do it, Taiwanese companies' ability to deal with Chinese-language issues may give them an edge in the Asian market. The CCL rece ntly demonstrated several prototypes of its WebTV and claims that its GUI provides for an easy-to-use network computer that would be attractive to consumers in mainland China, where a modern telecommunications infrastructure is being constructed.

Oracle Corp. chief executive officer Larry Ellison visited Japan and Taiwan in recent weeks, and Sun Microsystems Inc. president Scott McNealy is to make a similar Asian swing at the end of March.

During his Taiwan stopover, Ellison outlined his network-computing strategy in a 90-minute presentation to about 120 Taiwanese industry leaders and then held private meetings with Acer Group cofounder Stan Shih and the CCL leadership. Shih recently set up product-development groups for network computers and set-top boxes, hiring a CCL deputy director and 12 engineers who had worked on network-related projects at the government lab.

TI teams with Go on Window s DSP environment

By Ashok Bindra

Dallas -- Texas Instruments Inc. is working with Go DSP (Toronto) to develop a Windows-based integrated debugging and code-development environment for TI's TMS320 fixed- and floating-point families.

Toward that end, Go DSP has developed Code Composer, which provides a fully integrated programming environment and graphical user interface (GUI) under Windows 3.1 and 95 for TI's C3x/C4x/C5x lines. Go plans to extend that support to the C2xx and C54x.

Code Composer 1.5 seamlessly hooks to TI's compilers so that a user can compile in the background while debugging and compiling in the foreground, said Go DSP president Greg Da Silva.

Code Composer has also been ported to the Spox operating system from Spectron Microsystems Inc. (Santa Barbara, Calif.). Scotland's 3L Ltd. is verifying the Code Composer with its Parallel C operating system.

"We believe that Code Composer's capabilities will speed development time and help DSP developers create new applications cost-effectively," said TI fixed-point DSP business manager Jim Larimer. He said TI will offer version 1.5 through its worldwide distribution network as an optional debugger. Code Composer will also be offered by TI's third-party hardware makers, including Ariel, Spectrum Signal Processing and LSI Logic Corp.

HDL numbers in dispute

By Richard Goering

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A surprising new set of market numbers from the Electronic Design Automation Companies (EDAC) is sending VHDL and Verilog advocates back to battle stations, attempting to explain a sharp falloff in worldwide VHDL simulation revenues in 1995 while Verilog revenues remained relatively stable.

According to the EDAC numbers, Verilog revenues passed VHDL simulation revenues in early 1994, finishing the year at $66.83 million compared with $59.23 million for VHDL. The surprise comes in 1995, where according t o preliminary numbers, VHDL revenues fell sharply to $26.79 million for the first three quarters. Verilog revenues dipped slightly and then recovered to total $51.8 million.

Observers differed sharply over the interpretation of these numbers, which fly in the face of earlier industry predictions that VHDL would overwhelm Verilog by now. Bill Fuchs, chairman of Open Verilog International, said the new numbers prove Verilog's longstanding market dominance, but others argue that they simply reflect falling prices for VHDL simulators.

Representatives of Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys expressed surprise and even disbelief, saying that the numbers don't match their own sales experience. But Alain Hanover, EDAC chairman and CEO of Viewlogic Systems Inc., said the numbers should be more accurate than other industry projections because they come directly from the vendors.

Solectron acquires TI's C MS group

MILPITAS, Calif. -- Solectron Corp. is continuing to buy up contract-manufacturing operations, acquiring Texas Instruments Inc.'s Custom Manufacturing Services (CMS) group. The $130-million deal will broaden Solectron's design capabilities, because TI's engineers have a strong ASIC-design background.

Solectron will pick up the assets and employees at two TI facilities: the CMS headquarters in Austin, Texas, and a plant in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The deal continues Solectron's strategy of growth through acquisition. While most other acquisitions mainly gained manufacturing capacity and broadened the $2.1-billion company's marketing reach, the TI purchase will extend Solectron's technology.

"TI's CMS business is primarily in printed-circuit-board assembly, so from a macro level it's much the same of what we have," he said. "However, they have fairly extensive pre-manufacturing capabilities, in ASICs and board layout. We don't have any ASIC design capabilities now, so that's a bi g deal. We'll have a lot more design capability."

Other differences between the TI acquisition and Solectron's earlier purchases include TI's surface-mount capabilities and its focus on contract manufacturing. Some of the other operations focused mainly on through-hole technology, while TI's plants have about a dozen surface-mount lines.

Many of the other operations were captive manufacturing plants, so they were not prepared to do business with the outside world. TI's CMS group is already competing for external business, so it will be easier to integrate, the spokesman said. The TI purchase should be completed by April. The TI operation has been profitable, the spokesman said.

Computer engineering jobs to surge 6% yearly through 2005

WASHINGTON -- By 2005, computer engineers will overtake mechanical engineers as "the second largest of the engineering disciplines," according to the newest edition of Engineers quarterly. Electrical/electronic engineering will continue to lead the disciplines, but its projected 1.65 percent annual growth rate will lag considerably behind the 6 percent for computer engineering.

Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the January edition of Engineers says of computer engineering that "if you want to be where expansion is happening, this is where you need to go."

Richard Ellis, director of the Engineering Workforce Commission and author of the Engineers article, attributes the surge in computer engineering, both hardware and software, to growth among service organizations and the entry of computer engineering into all kinds of employment sectors, including health services, retail and the construction industry.

Ellis writes that the Bureau of Labor Statistics' "new occupational projections suggest unprecedented efforts to apply computers in virtually every sector of the economy."

Virtually all the so-called computer companies have formed consulting units: IBM, Digital Equipment, Unisys and EDA companies such as Cadence Design Systems and Mentor Graphics.

Nat'l Instrument overhauls virtual-instrument packages

By Stan Runyon

AUSTIN, Texas -- Two of the most popular software packages for developing virtual instrumentation in PC-based systems--LabView and LabWindows/CVI--have received major overhauls by their developer, National Instruments (NI).

Version 4.0 of each package promises new levels of productivity, connectivity and customization capability. Equally significant is that the two products can team up for the first time, fusing graphical and C programming .

"Both LabView and LabWindows/CVI are taking huge steps forward, both for the novice or first-time user and for the experienced, professional developer," said visual-development-tools marketing manager John Pasquarette.

LabView 4.0 adds three main features: the FlexView user interface, tools for editing and debugging advanced instrumentation systems, and tools for connectivity to other software environments.

LabWindows/CVI 4.0 extends its capabilities to those who work in standard C and C++, using standard software from Microsoft, Borland, Symantec and others. LabWindows' features include user-interface tools, instrument drivers analysis routines and I/O libraries.

NFS servers upgraded

By Loring Wirbel

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The low end of the network file system (NFS) market is getting more and more interesting as vendors offer low-priced hardware to appeal to workgroup users needing to access NFS data.

Network Appliance Inc., a company that has sacrificed a true Unix operating system in favor of a small real-time kernel in its servers, has launched its first PCI-based server for the low-end workgroup.

Mea nwhile, server-storage specialist Falcon Systems Inc. (Sacramento, Calif.) has introduced a NFS file server hailing from its new server-development division. FastfilePro combines a PCI-based motherboard with a Fiber Channel port for fast RAID access.

At Network Appliance, the NetApp F220 server essentially replaces the older FAServer 1400. Mark Saul, vice president of marketing, said that the greater emphasis on protocol software for a generic PCI platform base indicates that "NFS servers are moving in the direction of routers: The bulk of the value-added is in software. We expect to move to models where we will license our software for common architectures rather than sell server boxes."

Release 3.1 of the Network Appliance software creates modules around the company's compact real-time kernel. Software modules for physical media access, TCP/IP stacks, NFS stacks, a proprietary Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL) system, RAID and SCSI disk are provided. Network Appliance will offer separate protocol-st ack modules for Windows NT and eventually introduce hybrid workgroup servers that can handle NFS and NT.

Cell-phone software offered

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Wireless Link Inc., a company until now involved in hardware designs for cellular handsets and pagers, is offering a tool for OEMs and service providers developing cellular phones. The company is licensing development modules under the umbrella of Cellular Telephone Software.

First products will be aimed at North American AMPS and European ETACS analog cellular systems. Wireless Link is also examining 800-MHz digital cellular and 1.9-GHz PCS.

Hamid Najafi, president and founder of Wireless Link, said the power of the company's diagnostic software may make it applicable to system providers as well as hardware manufacturers. The main target for the software, however, is second-tier OEMs that may not have the resources to develop f ull AMPS protocol suites internally.

A C-based call-processing software module, resident in the handset, operates on a dual-tasking operating system developed internally at Wireless Link. Senior software engineer Scott Terry said the dual-task OS, a code-efficient kernel for handset and PDA environments, treats the AMPS protocol as a single task and assigns it the highest system priority.

IBM opens CMOS 5X to net-lists

HOPEWELL JUNCTION, N. Y. -- IBM Microelectronics has announced that it is accepting net-lists for its CMOS 5X process--the third and final derivative of the company's original 0.5-micron ASIC process. In its new incarnation, the process uses 0.35-micron drawn gates with effective lengths of 0.25 microns. It joins the 0.46-micron CMOS 5L and 0.36-micron CMOS 5S in IBM's suite of sub-micron ASIC processes.

Aside from the difference in its gate length, the new proces s is little changed from CMOS 5S. The 5X version includes the local interconnect layer that gives excellent SRAM footprints and uses exactly the same metal pitches in all layers as 5S.

But there are differences based on the shorter gates. The most obvious is a lower operating voltage--2.7 V nominal. Oxide thickness is accordingly a bit smaller, at 70 angstroms.

All of that leads to a significant unloaded speed increase over 5S, according to the company. IBM claims that the two-input NAND delay is about 20 percent shorter in 5X than in 5S, and that the single-port SRAM cycle time is about 15 percent shorter.

Zoom video hits Cardbus

By David Lieberman

DANVERS, Mass. -- The PC-card silicon story heats up next week with the announcement by Databook Inc. of a zoom-video-equipped PC-card controller chip, after the recent entries by Texas Instruments and Cirrus Logic. The company touts its Patriot DB87144 as a low-chip-count, real estate-efficient solution.

Databook also brings a second source and a multimedia partner to the show, having reached an agreement with Standard Microsystems Corp. to produce a pin-compatible part, and having cooperatively built an interface with Chips and Technologies between its own DB87144 evaluation board and a zoom-video graphics-controller evaluation board from Chips.

Today, PCMCIA is essentially a notebook-computer phenomenon, though it's getting substantial play in desktop computers for U.S. government use and as the encryption medium for European set-top boxes. However, because of its ease of use, the PCI-like capabilities of its PC-card incarnation, and the advent of zoom video for multimedia, its use in desktops and various types of embedded systems is destined to expand, said Steve Wilson, Databook director of marketing. Meanwhile, he added, PC card and zoom video ensure the notebook computer an active multimedia future akin to activities in des ktop machines.

"Zoom video is a simple, inexpensive way to display video without bouncing up against other system functions," he said. "You just route your YUV data direct from a PC card to your VGA controller."

Speedy vector processor relies on basic MOSFET trait

By Chappell Brown

MALVERN, England -- A basic IV characteristic of floating-gate MOSFETs is being exploited by circuit designers at the Defense Research Agency (DRA) here to build a high-speed vector processor with the potential to compute 500,000 distance values per second, at a power dissipation of only 100 mW.

In contrast, a 32-bit DSP running the same algorithm at 50 MHz would compute 23 thousand vectors in the same time, consuming 2 W of power in the process.

The operation of a basic processing cell has been verified in a 2-micron CMOS prototype and the throughput figures were derived from a Spice model of the full design. The dramatic improvement in speed and power dissipation of the processor results from the analog nature of the computation.

Since the Euclidean distance between vectors is a sum of squares, the DRA design uses an analogy with the IV characteristics of floating-gate MOSFETs at saturation, where the output current is the square of the voltage drop between source and gate minus the threshold voltage. The output currents can be summed simply by feeding them into a common node so that a simple array of floating-gate MOSFETs can be used to calculate a sum of squares.

Sunny forecast for consumer-level solar energy generation

By Gail Robinson

WILTON, N.H. -- Advances in electronics, thin-film technology, and local-utility-interactive power generation may soon enable to consumers to generate electricity via solar kits picked up at the local hardware store.

In one new develop ment, engineers at startup Advanced Energy Systems (Wilton) and at Solarex Corp. (Frederick, Md.), a photovoltaic-module manufacturer, have combined forces to design a large-area, 250-W ac photovoltaic module for use in local power generation. The module may help push solar power into the more market-friendly realm of quick, easy and cheap installation.

Photovoltaic technology was discovered in the mid-1800s by French physicists Edmond Becquerel and Charles Fritts, who predicted that roofs covered with solar cell arrays would someday generate electricity. Not until very recently, however, has the technology become practical, with prices plummeting from tens of thousands of dollars per watt in the 1960s to below $10/W in the 1980s.

Yet hurdles remain. While the price of the solar cells themselves has moved out of the stratosphere, interfacing the power sources with standard residential, ac power is still a complex process requiring expensive, specialized components. Since photovoltaic modules produce d c rather than the ac electricity used to power appliances, an inverter is needed to convert the dc to ac.

Handhelds get their own PC cards: Minicards

By Ashok Bindra

ATTLEBORO FALLS, Mass. -- The pervasion of digital technology into consumer-electronics products has spawned shrinking form factors for memory cards. Intel Corp. and a host of consumer-electronics companies, silicon suppliers and personal-computer makers have drafted a new digital media specification involving a miniaturized removable memory-card format.

The Miniature Card (Minicard), about one-fourth the size of a PCMCIA card, is designed to store and exchange image, text and voice data for digital cameras, audio recorders, cellular phones, handheld computers and other portable consumer devices. In fact, it has been generated to foster data exchange between handheld consumer-electronics products and PCs. Measuring 38 x 33 x 3.5 mm, the Mincard is the smallest standard form factor for removable memory-expansion cards, Intel claims.

Initiated about a year ago, the Mincard spec was jointly created by Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), General Magic, Sharp Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., Philips Electronics, among others. It is supported by computer makers, including Compaq Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. The spec will be released by the end of this month by the Miniature Card Implementers Forum, and the 5-V Minicard is slated for sampling late in the second quarter. Preliminary specs were disclosed last week in Japan (see Jan. 29, page 16). Meanwhile, Intel plans to produce a flash implementation with initial densities of 2 to 4 Mbytes.

The puck's the thing: how Fox Sports did it

By Terry Costlow

MENLO PARK, Calif. -- It's rare for the public to have much interest in electronic packaging, but Fox Sport s changed that briefly last month when it stuck transmitters inside a hockey puck so it appeared on TV surrounded by a blue aura. The technique for putting infrared emitters inside a puck was so intriguing that even daily newspapers displayed photos explaining the package used in the NHL All-Star Game.

The future of the puck, which can be enhanced with any type graphics, such as a comet tail that glows red when it passes a certain speed, is still uncertain. But technically, it showed that electronic enhancement of televised images can be almost limitless.

The system consists of four basic elements. The first is the puck, which has battery power to send signals for about 10 minutes. The next is a set of sensors that surround the rink, monitoring the position of the puck. Next is a device on the cameras that tells the computer system where the camera is pointed. Last is a bank of computers that determine where to put the blue dot, compute the puck's speed and add special effect like the red tail.

"T he puck has a ceramic oscillator, 20 infrared emitters, an accelerometer and some CMOS logic and switching. There's also a lithium battery, which is probably the most expensive component in there," said Stan Honey, executive vice president of technology at News Corp.'s Technology Group, a sister division to Fox. Honey joined Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. when Murdoch bought Honey's company, Etak Inc., which makes navigation equipment.

While the application is highly unusual, the packaging techniques aren't. Beyond being small, the main goal is low cost, so commonplace techniques are desirable.

"They're just surface-mount parts and the board is a pretty conventional four-layer board," Honey said. "The main way it's different is that the circuit board is potted with a flexible epoxy. It's really through being small that we avoid things being broken by distortion when the puck is hit."

Zilog DSP cor e acts as MCU

By Ron Wilson

CAMPBELL, Calif. -- Zilog Inc. has been gradually building bridges between its Z8 microcontroller family and newer digital-signal-processing (DSP) architectures for some time now--a reaction to a market that is increasingly looking for ways to combine control and DSP tasks onto one piece of silicon. Zilog, holding a strong position on the control side of the equation with its Z8 architecture, has been adding DSP capabilities in varying degrees to meet specific market needs.

In some cases, this has been as simple as providing faster Z8 cores to do more arithmetic. In other cases, Z8 cores have been combined with DSP hardware for specific tasks. In still other products, Zilog has provided a DSP core with peripherals instead of a microcontroller.

The latest entrant in that category is the Z8946X core. This is a 16-bit, 40-MHz DSP core that offers an internal four-bus Harvard architecture, with two external buses, permitting simultaneous fetching of instruction and data words or two data words.

The core provides microcontroller-like functions as well as single-cycle bit manipulation, making it much more suitable than most pure DSP cores for device management in practical applications. Zilog claims the core will be adequately fast and cost-effective for modems, wireless telephones and similar applications.

Microsoft raises bar with 3-D software

REDMOND, Wash. -- In a non-disclosure briefing before 150 members of the personal-computer 3-D graphics community last week, Microsoft Corp. encouraged some and stunned others with the promise of 400k polygons/second 3-D rendering in software without the use of a hardware accelerator, sources have told EE Times.

The briefing was to prepare developers for the unveiling of Microsoft's Direct3D interface. The 400k figure, if taken at face value, would be twice the rendering performance of most 3-D graphics chips for the PC market. The numbers were claimed for a standard 150-MHz Pentium--significantly, not a prototype using Intel's MMX extended instruction set, which could be expected to greatly enhance rendering performance.

Japan says sayonara to trade pact

By George Leopold

WASHINGTON -- A "hollowed-out" U.S.-Japan semiconductor agreement set to expire in July has outlived its usefulness in a global market and will not be renewed, the new Japanese government has declared.

"We will not renew or extend the [semiconductor agreement] in any form" after it expires July 31," Japanese trade officials pledged in a white paper released last week by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). During a briefing, Yoshihiro Sakamoto, MITI international vice minister and chief trade negotiator, echoed the hard-line stance of new Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto.

The first detailed Japanese analysis of the 1991 agreement concludes that its raison d'etre has been undermined by globalization of the IC industry, the rise of other Asian chip makers, joint ventures between U.S. and Japanese companies and growing Japanese reliance on foreign components. "The simple structure of 'Japan vs. U.S.,' which the arrangement was based on, has substantially deviated considerably from economic and business reality," the white paper argues.

Thomas Armstrong, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), took issue with the Japanese campaign against the agreement, calling the accord "one of the most effective tools in international trade the United States and Japan have ever had."

Overall, foreign chip makers have grabbed 20 percent of the Japanese market for seven straight quarters. At last count, they held 26.2 percent under the U.S. formula.

The $500 net box: Is it hype or hop e?

By Ron Wilson and Junko Yoshida

SAN FRANCISCO -- Is there life after the PC? The viability a $500 "network computer" is the burning question on the collective mind of the electronics industry. But how solid is the concept and how real are the market prospects for such a radical new system? Answers to these questions came into focus last week at an industry new-product summit convened here by EE Times and OEM Magazine.

Despite many business-model and technical differences, industry consensus seems to be taking shape that a $500 NC is not an end in itself, but rather a vehicle to provide media-rich solutions, applications and information services at a fraction of the cost of today's $2,000 multimedia PCs. Discussion centered on three topics: who would buy the systems; the technical tasks to make the NC work; and the business model that could make it real.

Both Andy Laursen, vice president of the Network Computing Division at Oracle, and Robin Saxby, president and CEO of Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. (ARM)--two leading proponents of the NC--emphasized that the NC is not a stripped-down PC. Their assumption is that NC will be doing a different job than that for which the PC was designed, and doing it better. "If the NC isn't significantly faster than a PC, it will fail," noted Saxby.

This new class of products will depend on browsers like Netscape, software technology such as Java, and applications like the World Wide Web to provide the data and applications that a PC would store on its disk. In fact, a number of emerging markets have needs revolving around shared data.

Examples would be groupware and workflow tools in the office, electronic commerce or multiplayer games at home, or video-on-demand. In cases where there is a shared database--particularly when it can be modified by lots of people--the NC architecture is much more appropriate than the PC architecture.

Broadcasters defend right to free spectrum

By George Leopold

WASHINGTON -- Broadcasters are firing back in the battle over digital-TV spectrum.

In comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week, broadcasters warned that the survival of free broadcast TV, as well as the transition to digital TV, depends on their getting the full 6-MHz channels. They also petitioned regulators to mandate compatibility between cable and broadcast technologies and mandatory cable transmission of all local broadcast programming.

The comments were in reply to an FCC rulemaking on advanced TV begun last August. They also follow calls by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., and other lawmakers to sell digital-TV spectrum at auction rather than turn it over to broadcasters free. Dole has branded broadcasters' efforts to get free spectrum as "corporate welfare" (search our archive for story, Jan. 15, page 2).

While not addressing auction issues directly, broadcasters petitioned regulators to assign to them all digital spectrum, rather than split up the 6-MHz channels. Noting that the HDTV Grand Alliance system is based on 6-MHz channels, they argued that "if broadcasters are not allocated a full 6 MHz for the transition to digital, broadcast HDTV simply will not be a consumer option."

Richard Wiley, chairman of an FCC advisory panel on HDTV, said digital TV spectrum "can't be sliced up" without risking the technical superiority of the HDTV standard.

Citing the "disastrous effects" spectrum auctions would have on the transition to HDTV, broadcasters also warned that "proposals to open the licensing of ATV channels to all comers would seriously cripple the chances for [digital TV's] benefits to be realized on a nationwide basis." Wiley told the FCC recently that auctions would delay the transition to HDTV, eventually turning it into a subscription service.

Cadence goes a new way and multimedia designers get their own EDA tool

By Richard Goering

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Announcing what appears to be the first comprehensive EDA tool set aimed at multimedia design, Cadence's Alta group this week unveils Envision, which adds high-level image processing and analysis to Alta's existing Signal Processing Worksystem (SPW). The system-level design tool opens a new strategic direction for Alta, and underlies the growing emphasis on application-specific EDA.

The Envision Multimedia Design System builds upon the "convergence simulation architecture" announced by Alta last fall, which provides an object-oriented simulation environment for both control and datapath elements. Envision adds another layer that provides multimedia data types, pre-built libraries of image processing functions, management of large data objects and interactive image analysis.

The tool suite is aimed at such applications as set-top boxes for digital video, color copiers, document imaging and videoconferencing.

Worried about Sun takeover? Not software-rich Apple lab

By Alexander Wolfe

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- Enter Apple Computer's corporate headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino and you will find few traces of the world-class software technology that's being churned out by the company's research laboratories a few doors away.

While chief executive officer Michael Spindler and chairman Mike Markkula try to manage the turmoil surrounding Apple's possible takeover by Sun Microsystems, the denizens of the lab--officially, the Advanced Technology Group (ATG)--are anything but panicked, industry insiders said.

That's because ATG is considered something of a "Bell Labs west"--a closeted, cozy research center where some of the best minds in computer science pursue their visions of software future, with little pressure to convert the fruits of their labors into marketable products. Indeed, ATG's technologies are considered a rich vein, ripe for mining by any company that acquires Apple.

"Appl e has one of the fattest software-technology portfolios in the world," said Richard Doherty, president of The Envisioneering Group, the Seaford, N.Y., consultant. "I've seen stuff sitting on the shelf that's better than Java."

Apple's treasure trove of software includes the next-generation Copland operating system, Quicktime multimedia tools, personal-digital-assistant code stemming from the Newton project and the OpenDoc software components. ATG also has access to object-oriented software developed by the moribund Taligent and Kaleida ventures. (Kaleida, a joint effort with IBM, has folded; Taligent, a partnership with IBM and Hewlett-Packard, has been taken over by IBM.)

Pentium-based multichip module coming for notebooks

By Terry Costlow

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- MicroModule Systems Inc. is preparing to unveil a Pentium-based multichip module that combines many of the key chips needed fo r building portable systems, giving notebook designers a way to shrink systems and reduce costs. The concept has attracted a number of business partners and is also generating interest from notebook designers.

"We think MCMs are an excellent path to performance," said David Lunsford, director of advanced technology at Dell Products of Austin, Texas. We're pretty excited about this technology; it shows promise for very-high-performance systems. It handles some of the EMI, thermal and space issues that are major concerns for notebook designs."

MMS has forged strong agreements with a number of component vendors, including Intel. Working under its SmartDie program for supplying bare chips, Intel is providing a full range of Pentium parts, as well as its Mobile Triton chipset. PicoPower's Vesuvius chipset is also available to notebook designers, as are SRAMs from three vendors, Hitachi, Samsung and Micron Technology. Connector makers Amp and Cinch have agreed to supply compatible sockets for the module and National Semiconductor provides a thermal sensor.

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