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

02/09/96

Report from ISSCC: Asians get serious about flash

Mitsubishi's 1.7-inch disk drive fits in PC card

SGS-Thomson cools on Coco project

SGS-Thomson proposes interface for ICs handling video

Siemens ponders entering PowerPC market

LSI Logic embraces commercial EDA tools
What's new(s) at EE Times-interactive

02/08/96

Madge buys Teleos; swaps software with Cisco

Tiny disk drives find homes in new applications

Is Zenith rebounding from a nadir?

Windows EDA is now a 'Pure' play

Olivetti spin-off tackles ATM-based multimedia

02/07/96

EEs jobs reasonably secure, despite national layoff trend

Khepera robot rolls into public domain

TI, Toshiba take different low-end notebook roads

Pictorius' Prograph allows visual objects for Windows

Teradyne makes writing mixed-signal test programs easy

02/06/96

Sharp turbocharges Zaurus organizer to enter PDA realm

NASA helping vendors move BGAs into harsh environments

Switching regulators take on portable PCs

IgT offers 4-channel UNI processor for ATM

Vadem boosts palmtop market with x86-based processor

02/05/96

'Web-aware' MPUs roll from Digital, Sun

Telecom bill finally nears completion

ESDA wounded during 'shootout'

Progressive-scan digital TV demo'd

Amelio quits National, reportedly to take Apple helm

U.S., Japan to hold IC tr ade talks

Report from ISSCC: Asians get serious about flash

By David Lammers

SAN FRANCISCO -- As growing volumes of digital still cameras and other flash memory-dependent products head for market, Asian memory-chip companies are getting serious about flash. Indeed, all seven of the flash papers presented at this week's International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) were from Asian companies.

That's no trivial event, given the dominance of the flash market to date by Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Two papers, from Samsung Electronics and NEC Corp., even expanded on a theme introduced by Intel at last year's ISSCC: multilevel logic, which employs slightly different levels of threshold voltages to store more than 1 bit in each cell.

Toshiba Corp., for example, demonstrated at ISSCC that it is taking a pr actical approach to flash design. The company has kept one group of flash engineers working on its serial NAND devices, now being manufactured at the 32-Mbit density. The NOR camp, meanwhile, came to ISSCC to describe a 16-Mbit, 3.3-V-only design, based on a negative-bias-erase scheme, that will sample near the end of the year at 8 and 4 Mbits, said Koji Sakui, a design manager at Toshiba's Microelectronics Engineering Laboratory (Kawasaki, Japan).

The device has a fast, 35-ns random-access time and a 5-ýs program time, and it takes half a second to erase a 64-kbyte block. A 0.4-micron process was used to fabricate the 81.4-mm2 die.

Mitsubishi's 1.7-inch disk drive fits in PC card

By Yoshiko Hara

TOKYO -- Mitsubishi Electric Corp. has developed a 1.7-inch floppy-disk drive that fits into any PCMCIA Type II card. The target application is portable computers that lack a built-in 3.5-inch floppy drive but have a card slot.

Though the company would not specify a price, Mitsubishi contends that the add-in PCMCIA drive could create a low-cost replaceable-storage market among subnotebook PCs.

The drive's measurements--54 mm x 5 mm x 90.6 mm--are identical to those of a 5-mm-thick Type II PC card; the weight is 1.575 ounces. The floppy-disk cartridge is 47 x 2 x 56.5 mm, and the prototype metal disk has a formatted capacity of 1.44 Mbytes.

"Starting with that capacity, we are optimistic that we can easily expand the capacity 10 times," said Tamotsu Nomaguchi, director of the Mitsubishi Information Technology R&D center. TDK Corp., one of the largest floppy-disk suppliers, is expected to produce the floppy disks.

Mitsubishi plans to begin sample shipments within the year. "We are going to aggressively promote this PC card FDD [floppy-disk drive] to establish a de facto standard," said Nomaguchi.

SGS-Thomson cools on Coco project

By Peter Clarke

GENTILLY Cedex, France -- SGS-Thomson Microelectronics (STM) here has suspended its participation in, and effectively stopped, a European R&D project to develop an architecture for reconfigurable logic. The project, called Coco, sought to develop and test a new field-programmable logic architecture that could be integrated with a microprocessor core to produce a configurable coprocessor.

STM has left fellow Coco participants with a chip but it is not willing to provide further resources to get the chip tested. The remaining members of the program are now seeking a replacement for STM--probably a semiconductor company with a potential commercial interest in the architecture.

Coco is part of the Open Microprocessor Systems Initiative (OMI) within the European Union's Esprit information technology R&D program. Its field- programmable logic architecture, developed at Oxford University's Computing Laboratory, is based on content-addressable memory (CAM) cells as the fundamental unit to store the logic configuration. The fine-grained architecture is said to allow ease of mapping and place and routing and to support a wider range of logic structures better than existing FPGA architectures.

SGS-Thomson proposes interface for ICs handling video

By Junko Yoshida

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- SGS-Thomson Microelectronics (STM) has proposed an open interface specification to connect video-enabled graphics-controller chips and such video devices as MPEG, videophone and TV-tuner decoders. The company argues that a standard interface would untangle the snarl of vendor-specific video buses now binding the industry and would pave the way for graphics controllers and video-processing chips--markets that SGS intends to mine.

The Video Module Interface (VMI) proposes a set of common interfaces between the graphical user-interface (GUI) chip and video-module chip: an 8-bit generic host port, video-display port, I2C port and such system signals as interrupt and reset.

SGS-Thomson developed the specification in collaboration with other chip vendors, particularly Cirrus Logic Inc., noted Chris Lam, market-development specialist at SGS.

Lam said SGS-Thomson began shopping the spec around last summer to other silicon and PC-system vendors and that VMI today is publicly endorsed by a range of vendors, including Alliance Semiconductor, Cirrus Logic, Macronix, Oak Technology, Sierra Semiconductor, SiS, STB Systems, Trident Microsystems and ULSI Systems.

Siemens ponders entering PowerPC market

By Peter Clarke

DRESDEN, Germany -- Such is the enthusiasm for commodity chips at Siemens Corp.'s semiconductor division, spurred by success in DRAMs, that the company is considering re-entering the mainstream m icroprocessor market with the PowerPC.

Looking at forecasts that DRAM and MPUs will take increasing market share toward the decade's end, Ulrich Schumacher, head of the standard ICs group in the semiconductor division, said, "We would like to see other people successful with PowerPC before we attempt it."

Siemens would be in a natural position to take up the PowerPC because it is already in a technology partnership with IBM, Toshiba and Motorola on DRAMs. Motorola and IBM designed early versions of the PowerPC together and could welcome support. Siemens's support would further cement the alliance.

"PowerPC seems to be the strongest consortium," Schumacher said. "At Siemens, an internal decision has not been made if it is a good area to attack. They [IBM and Motorola] seem to have the best chance . . . against Intel, but I still have my doubts. No decision has been taken."

LSI Logic embraces co mmercial EDA tools

By Richard Goering

MILPITAS, Calif. -- One of the last bastions of proprietary ASIC design tools will give way this week as LSI Logic Corp. announces its first integrated design flow using commercial front-end EDA tools. LSI Logic's ToolKit environment will permit sign-off on a number of third-party simulators and, representing one of the first efforts by ASIC vendors to do so, on a static-timing analyzer.

One of the leading providers of gate-array and standard-cell ASICs, LSI Logic continued to promote and sell proprietary tools long after most of its competitors had embraced commercial EDA tools. In the past two years, LSI Logic has started to downplay its proprietary front-end tools and has forged agreements with Synopsys, Mentor, Cadence and Viewlogic. But until now it hasn't announced sign-off on third-party simulators.

"Our customers would prefer to use open-market EDA tools," said Susan Runowicz-Smith, marketing manager at LSI Logic. "We think the open-market tools will certainly do the job for us, and this enables us to get away from having to develop tools."

The company will continue to use its own layout tools and, unlike some ASIC vendors, does not encourage the use of customer-owned tooling for IC layout.

Madge buys Teleos; swaps software with Cisco

By Loring Wirbel

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Madge Networks Inc. has extended its switching expertise from LAN to WAN by acquiring Teleos Communications Inc. (Eatontown, N.J.) in a pooling of interests worth approximately $165 million. Madge simultaneously agreed to license the circuit-switching ISDN technology in Teleos's AccessSwitch to Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose) for integration into Cisco's new Universal Access Server. In exchange, Cisco will license its Internetwork Operating System to Madge.

Together the actions complete the evolution of Madge from a token-ring interface-card vendor in th e late 1980s to a comprehensive LAN-to-WAN frame-switching and cell-switching giant. Last fall, Madge gained a big presence in Ethernet switching hubs through the acquisition of Israel-based Lannet Communications Ltd.

"We are now filling in the missing key components of our end-to-end switching strategy-- the WAN components," said Madge founder and chairman Robert Madge.

Tiny disk drives find homes in new applications

By Terry Costlow

BOULDER, Colo. -- After years of predictions that small disk drives would find use outside the basic computer industry, drive makers are starting to see drives being embedded in special-purpose products. Makers of automotive systems, video cameras and other products are starting to store data on 1.8- and 2.5-inch drives.

This trend is good news for Integral Peripherals Inc., for one, the leading supplier of 1.8-inch drives. That size hasn't found nearly as much success in computers as was once expected, so the volumes provided by these non-traditional applications are more significant for Integral than for the huge corporations that make 2.5-inch drives.

Integral, whose most visible embedded application is an automotive navigation system marketed by Rockwell, is addressing these emerging markets. "We're taking steps to make our products more stable for industrial applications," said Clifford Johnson, central region sales manager at Integral.

Vendors of 2.5-inch drives are also starting to see some interest. IBM Storage System Division (San Jose, Calif.) is shipping to makers of PBX systems and other communication products. Seagate Technology Inc. (Scotts Valley, Calif.) is selling drives for arcade games and printers.

Is Zenith rebounding from a nadir?

By Junko Yoshida

GLENVIEW, Ill. -- After years of losses in the mi llions of dollars, Zenith Electronics Corp. appears to be on the rebound. The company, acquired by Korea's L.G. Electronics Corp.in November, plans a serious push into the global market and is betting big on the consumer digital revolution and the rise of the Internet.

Though it holds a solid third place in the domestic TV market, Zenith's presence outside the United States is virtually nil. But Zenith president and chief executive officer Al Moschner said the company plans to change that as it makes a significant investment in manufacturing and achieves leadership in digital and high-definition TV.

Moschner, a 42 year-old former IBM executive, stunned the industry last summer when he sought a major investment from the $47.5 billion Korean conglomerate, thus putting an end to Zenith's long, proud, but troubled reign as the last U.S. consumer-electronics manufacturer.

Moschner today calls the decision crucial to ensuring the company's continued survival and its ability to commercialize the digital HDTV technology in which it has invested eight years of R&D. Noting that less than 7 percent of Zenith's revenue comes from overseas, Moschner said that the company's lack of a global market presence "was clearly a hole in our strategy."

Windows EDA is now a 'Pure' play

By Loring Wirbel

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Pure Software Inc.--the young company that created a stir in EDA and computer-aided-software-engineering markets three years ago by offering tools to analyze the run-time behavior of C and C++ Unix programs--is porting the bulk of its products to Windows 95, Windows NT and any future derivants using the Win32 interface. First to arrive will be the Purify tool to analyze run-time errors, to be offered under Intel-based versions of NT in the second quarter.

The company is examining new methods and channels of distributing Windows products. Other tools to be offered include Q uantify, which looks for performance bottlenecks; PureCoverage, to ensure complete test coverage for application code; and PureDDTS, a life-cycle defect tracker. PureLink, an analyzer of build-time errors, probably will not be offered, because its functions are offered in several existing debugger tools.

"Obviously, our name is not as well-known among Windows developers as it is in the Unix environment," said Pure's new vice president of marketing, Rob Dickerson, who comes from Microsoft Corp. "But we think this should generate excitement, because most functions simply aren't offered by anyone in the Windows environment."

Olivetti spin-off tackles ATM-based multimedia

By Peter Clarke

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Italy's Olivetti S.p.A. is gearing up as its latest spin-off--Telemedia Systems Ltd. (TSL)--prepares to bring to market ideas and technologies developed at Olivetti's Research Lab oratories based here.

The startup is commercializing asynchronous-transfer-mode-based multimedia peripherals, including a "virtual presence" that exists as multiple intelligent cameras communicate over an ATM network. Such systems have been built with software agents and distributed processing that allow automatic camera selection based on where a person is in a room.

"Multimedia needs ATM and ATM needs multimedia--it's as simple as that," said Andy Hopper, vice president of research at Olivetti, head of Olivetti Research Cambridge and chairman of TSL. "With ATM, we can send multiple streams of multimedia across existing networks and with the 'end-point' technology offered by Telemedia Systems, we can now hook into these networks to capture and harness the power of multimedia throughout organizations."

TSL's first product is the N-point range of directly attached ATM-networked peripherals, which will capture, process and display multimedia data across 25-Mbit/second ATM networks.

EEs jobs reasonably secure, despite national layoff trend

CHICAGO -- There was good news and bad news in the job market, depending on how close to the rising waters you're located.

If you're in the telecommunications, computers or retail stream, the flood waters are high. The Challenger Employment Report tallied a 150-percent rise in layoffs last month, the highest monthly total in two years.

However, electronic engineers may be on high ground for this wave. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Engineering Manpower newsletter, the engineering unemployment rate declined last quarter to 2.2 percent, as a hiring surge in the West soaked up new graduates, immigrants and furloughed engineers with computer and semiconductor skills.

EEs kept pace in the fourth quarter of 1995, with 13,000 unemployed, for a 2.2 percent rate--slightly below 1995's yearly average of 15,000 unemployed and 2.4-percent rate, reported Robert Rivers, editor of Engineering Manpower.

He credits the still strong, if ebbing, book-to-bill ratio in the semiconductor industry and an influx of stock market money.

Khepera robot rolls into public domain

By R. Colin Johnson

VALBONNE, France -- A favorite robot of artificial-life researchers -- the Khepera, used at research institutions worldwide--now has a free simulation environment plus a biennial robot contest based on it.

The Khepera Simulator was put into the public domain and may be freely downloaded from http://alto.unice.fr/~om/khep-sim.html . With it, a Khepera robot and its environment can be simulated

in a two-dimensional graphical display. Programmers can write C or C++ programs for Khepera robots, but check them out first with a public-domain software simulator. Control ler code verified with the simulator can then be downloaded directly into a real Khepera robot.

"If you own a Khepera robot, you can drive the real robot from the simulator using the same control algorithm just by pushing the 'real robot' button with your mouse," said the programmer of the Khepera Simulator, Olivier Michel. The simulator allows neural networks, classifier systems or any other controller code to drive the software robot. Included with the package are example controllers, including a neural controller. Validated code can be transferred to a real Khepera robot with a single click of the mouse.

TI, Toshiba take different low-end notebook roads

By Rick Boyd-Merritt

TEMPLE, Texas -- Seeking to differentiate themselves in the increasingly me-too world of notebook computers, Texas Instruments and Toshiba America Information Systems (Irvine, Calif.) have both extended th eir sub-$2,000 portable lines

TI's Personal Productivity Products group (Temple, Texas) tapped its semiconductor cousins here to launch the Extensa model 460, which uses a custom version of TI's 100-MHz 486DX4 chip. Toshiba followed the Intel party line, which says the baseline notebook uses a 75-MHz mobile Pentium, the processor that powers Toshiba's Satellite 100CS.

TI's semiconductor group is making a custom clock-doubled 100-MHz DX4 for its notebook division. The semiconductor group aided the computer side in ironing the kinks out of the resulting 50-MHz system board. The Extensa wrings a performance advantage out of the fast bus; most 486-class systems--including TI's model 450--use a 25- or 33-MHz bus.

Toshiba's Satellite 100CS notebook continues Toshiba's tradition of using extended-data-out DRAM for main memory, rather than build in a second-level cache. TI, for its part, takes the opposite route, using 8 Mbytes of standard DRAM, but a 256-kbyte level-two cache.

Pictorius' Prograph allows visual objects for Windows

By Chappell Brown

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia -- Pictorius Inc. this month is releasing a Windows 95 version of Prograph CPX, a windowing-based application-development system that proponents claim can cut development time by a factor of five and almost eliminate debugging of programs. Three advanced software concepts--visual programming, object orientation and data flow--unite in Prograph CPX, which previously was available only as a Macintosh tool.

The company will offer a free version of Prograph for Windows--comprising the full language and an interpreter--so that developers can get hands-on experience with the new approach. A free version of Prograph Classic for the Macintosh is also available at the Pictorius Web site .

Further, the language could only be implemented on a full windowing system, which initially con fined it to the Macintosh as the only low-cost graphical platform available. A complete graphical user interface (GUI) is critical, because the language uses visual metaphors exclusively; no text-based code is involved in writing Prograph software, and the resulting data-flow diagrams are compiled directly to machine code.

Teradyne makes writing mixed-signal test programs easy

By Stan Runyon

Boston -- Teradyne Inc. has introduced a solution for writing a production or engineering test program for a complex mixed-signal or linear integrated circuit. The company believes Version 6 of its Interactive Menu-Assisted Graphics Environment (Image), with its new lineup of Expert tools, is the harbinger of a new era in test-system programming, one that allows engineers to focus on their devices, not the tester.

"Image V6 sets us down a path of 'device-centric' programming," said Rick Bourn e, product manager. "Users no longer need be system experts to program a machine, worrying about which sources are connected to which matrix pins, and which matrix pins go to which device pins.

"They can now directly tell the tester to connect, say, 5 V to device Vcc," Bourne explained. "The software is the expert that understands the tester hardware, and the user doesn't have to know the tester's language."

Bourne offered an example that requires testing a video device. "The object," he said, "may be to place an NTSC chroma test signal on pin 3 of a device. The user steps up, says that, and the software takes over."

Sharp turbocharges Zaurus organizer to enter PDA realm

By Rick Boyd-Merritt

MAHWAH, N.J. -- With a handful of enhancements, Sharp Electronics Corp. hopes to prod the hybrid organizer/personal digital assistant it launched last year out of the secure arms of the well- worn organizer market into the great unknown of the PDA world. The keyboard-based Zaurus model 5800 adds a brighter screen, more memory and list of new applications.

The Zaurus first hit retail shelves in February 1995. Said John Hannan, product marketing manager for Sharp's Personal Information and Communications Systems group, "The business we did in 1995 was largely from an extension of our organizer market. The Zaurus 5000 was bought by people who buy Sharp products and people who buy new gadgets, generally. As we look to 1996, we see an opportunity for growth via new users who are interested in communications."

Thus, the company has broadened the spectrum of communications front ends that now come preloaded in the Zaurus. AT&T Mail and Pager Access software, once available as loadable options, now come burned into ROM on the 5800. New client software from CompuServe is also on the new ROMs. With it, users can send and receive access to CompuServe and Internet mail, on-line forums and news ser vices.

NASA helping vendors move BGAs into harsh environments

By Terry Costlow

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- The rapid advance of area-array packages, particularly the ball-grid array (BGA), will be front and center at Chipcon '96 next week. Heat dissipation and performance benefits will be detailed at the conference, along with work to move BGAs into harsher environments.

Designers plan to put BGAs in products ranging from inexpensive handheld systems to hardware that will travel into outer space. While some observers have said that BGAs won't be suitable for high performance, one of the papers at the conference, sponsored by the Semiconductor Technology Center (Neffs, Pa.) and Tessera Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), will detail a study that might change that view.

Researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology are working with vendors to characterize th e use of BGAs during three key aspects of product life: processing/assembly, inspection and quality assurance and long-term reliability. The work is being done under a grant from NASA.

Many vendors, including system designers, package providers and test-equipment makers, will put BGAs through a number of tests to determine whether the package can be used in space. Included will be a complex matrix of tests, looking at BGAs with 300 to 600 contacts mounted on polyimide and FR-4 boards. A variety of layout schemes and inspection techniques will be examined by JPL, CalTech and their partners, and environmental tests have been designed to provide realistic operating results.

Switching regulators take on portable PCs

By Ashok Bindra

MILPITAS, Calif. -- With each new generation, portable-computer design grows more challenging as users demand more function in smaller sizes, lower power diss ipation and improved efficiency.

Powering these systems has become trickier as designers confront the mixing and matching of semiconductor devices and other components operating at different voltages. For example, today's Pentium-based notebook computers require at least four regulated dc voltages: 5 V and 3.3 V for logic, 2.9 V for microprocessors, and 12 V for PCMCIA cards.

Multiple voltages with more power and less dissipation from a smaller size demand, among many other things, a new generation of dc/dc converters with much higher efficiency over a wide load range, multi-output and the ability to sequence power-on voltages, generate lower noise and operate at constant frequency.

To address those requirements, Linear Technology Corp. has developed a line of dual synchronous stepdown switching regulators. These low-noise, high-efficiency switching regulators, the LTC1439 and LTC1438, are said to combine new architecture and functionality with BiCMOS process technology to deliver the kind of dc /dc converters for the new generation of notebooks, palmtop computers and other portable electronics.

IgT offers 4-channel UNI processor for ATM

By Loring Wirbel

GAITHERSBURG, Md. -- Integrated Telecom Technology Inc. (IgT) has introduced a four-channel user network interface (UNI) processor for Asynchronous Transfer Mode, capable of supporting the Level 2 Utopia spec for multiple physical-channel applications. It allows "Multi-phy" cell handshakes for four Sonet/ SDH channels, using the Utopia interface.

IgT is working with Synergy Semiconductor Inc. to bundle the new WAC-413-A Sonet ATM UNI processor with Synergy's SY69743 Quad Sonet/SDH transceiver. By 1997, IgT is projecting that the cost per port in high volumes of a full UNI and analog clock recovery solution, using the IgT and Synergy chips, will be less than $20 in high volumes.

The WAC-413-A leverages the design core of IgT's popular single-channel WAC-013-B UNI processor for 155-Mbit ATM. The new quad processor can be used with a mix of 51-Mbit/second and 155-Mbit/s ATM networks (as well as Sonet STS-1 substrates of 25.92 and 12.96 Mbits/ second). Its integration of four channels allows development of small-footprint complex systems such as redundant hubs and video multiplexers. Rochester, N.H.-based Cabletron Systems Inc. helped to define the quad version of the device, and will be the first to employ the IgT silicon in an upcoming ATM switch.

Vadem boosts palmtop market with x86-based processor

By Ron Wilson

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Sharp, the No. 1 player in the palmtop market uses very small proprietary 4-bit and 8-bit processors. The second most famous player on the palm--Hewlett-Packard--eschews the high performance and low power of mini-RISC and uses X86-compatible processors. Even when the company branched out from its PC-compatible LX and Omnibook products to do a pocket organizer, it hung on to X86 compatibility. The accumulated weight of all that X86 software--from ROM DOS to Geoworks and PenRight; from pretested PCMCIA drivers to personal productivity and PC connectivity applications--was enough to outweigh the technical advantages of mini-RISC.

Consequently, HP turned to Vadem--which has been building integrated X86 CPUs for years--to put its VG230 CPU in the OmniGo. Even Sharp, it turns out, has used the VG230 in at least one handheld product.

This exposure has created the need for an upgrade path. Vadem has now provided that with the VG330.

The VG330 brings a newer, faster CPU core into the product family, replacing the VG230's 16-MHz NEC V30HL with a 32-MHz V30MX.

The new core, Vadem said, gives integer performance comparable to a 386 CPU, about four times the speed of the VG230 core at 3.3 V.

'Web-aware' MPUs roll from Digital, Sun

By Junko Yoshida and Ron Wilson

MAYNARD, Mass. -- Digital Equipment Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. have launched new architectures in rival bids to claim the high end of the embedded-computing market.

Today, Digital will announce its first StrongARM microprocessor, the SA-100--a 200-MHz implementation of the Advanced RISC Machines CPU. For its part, Sun, last week, disclosed a family of microcontrollers--the Java processors--that will directly execute pseudo-code from the company's Java compiler.

Both efforts aim at essentially the same target: Web-aware, embedded but programmable computing appliances, from personal organizers to TV sets and telephones. Some experts have claimed that consumers' wild enthusiasm for the Web will spawn a runaway market for such devices. Not only will every home have its Web browser, they assert, but intranets will make $500 network computers ubiquitous at the office, and home networks will put net connections into information appliances throughout the dwellings of the affluent.

Sun's strategy for presence in the embedded-computing business counts on that vision more heavily than does Digital's.

The Digital StrongARM CPU will rely not on an inside track with the Web but on sheer computing power, superior speed per mW and low die size to muscle into the embedded-computing business. Already, Digital claims to have existing ARM users--such as Apple Computer Inc.'s Newton and Oracle Corp.'s Network Computer--lined up for the migration to StrongARM.

Telecom bill finally nears completion

By George Leopold

WASHINGTON -- Congress approved late last week sweeping telecommunications legislation and sent the bill to the White House to be signed into law.

While details of a final compromise were worked out in the Senate, the major stumbling block to final passage--Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole's demand that broadcasters pay for digital-TV licenses--appeared to have been finessed. Key lawmakers closed ranks against Dole's proposal to auction digital-TV licenses and promised to address Dole's concerns in hearings later this year. The spectrum issue could eventually be dealt with in separate legislation.

The House and Senate both voted last Thursday on the telecom-overhaul bill, which would eliminate barriers to competition in the phone and cable industries. The bill also contains provisions cracking down on smut on the Internet and a requirement that TV makers install V-chips in new sets to allow parents to block violent programming.

With House approval expected, Dole tried to shift the Senate debate over digital licenses from Congress to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is currently considering how to allocate the 6-MHz digital-TV channels. The HDTV Grand Alliance and broadcasters have told the FCC they need all of the spectrum to avoid interference and to make digital TV commercially viable (search our archive for story, Jan. 29, page 4).

Timetables for returning analog TV spectrum for auction vary from 10 to 15 years after digital licenses are granted. Some observers favor using a market-penetration formula to determine when analog channels are returned.

ESDA wounded during 'shootout'

By Richard Goering

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Do graphical electronic system design automation (ESDA) tools really help designers produce better, quicker designs? Not necessarily, according to the results of an ESDA-vs.-HDL "shootout" during last week's Design SuperCon show here.

The shootout, organized by EDA industry gadfly John Cooley, pitted 10 designers who were hand-coding VHDL or Verilog against vendor representatives using ESDA products from I-Logix, Mentor Graphics, Summit Design Automation and Speed Electronics. Contestants were given a small de sign, including three concurrent state machines and a small piece of asynchronous logic.

Contestants were evaluated in three categories: the time it took to enter the design, the time to implement an engineering change order (ECO) and, most important, the performance of the design after it was fed to the Synopsys Design Compiler for synthesis. Everyone used the same synthesis tool, and all but one of the hand-coders used Verilog.

Hoai Tran of Symbios Logic, one of the hand-coders, won the contest for having the fastest clock-to-clock design, at 1.77 ns. The Mentor Graphics team, using that company's System Architect product, came in last in all three categories.

Other ESDA vendors had mixed results. I-Logix, for instance, was near the bottom in the first two categories, but came in with the second-fastest design, at 2.09 ns. Speed, similarly, fared poorly in design-entry time but produced the third-fastest design, at 2.31 ns. Summit led the pack in ECO implementation time, but its final design tim es were near the bottom, at 3.23 ns for VHDL and 3.41 ns for Verilog.

Progressive-scan digital TV demo'd

By Yoshiko Hara

TOKYO -- Nippon Television Network Corp. (NTV) has collaborated with several of Japan's major electronics companies to develop a progressive-scan, digital-TV broadcasting system that uses real-time processing of MPEG-2 encoding and decoding.

Matsushita, Toshiba, Texas Instruments, DMC Corp. and Japan Satellite Systems worked with NTV, while Hitachi and Sanyo have announced their intention to support the system.

NTV demonstrated the system by transmitting a signal to the Japanese communication satellite JCSAT-1 that was received in Tokyo and Osaka. The demonstration is considered significant in that it showed for the first time digital programming encoded in a progressive-scanning format.

Though wide-screen TVs are the first application, the technology might find future use in emerging DVD-ROM drives. Indeed, the ability to pack 60 frames/second, at 525 lines/frame, on the disk could make DVD attractive for computers, executives here said.

DVD-standardization discussions about progressive scan began in earnest recently, said Taizo Nishimuro, an executive vice president at Toshiba who has been a leader in DVD standardization. Though he expressed confidence in the picture quality of DVD players for video, Nishimuro left the door open for adding progressive-scan support to DVD for computer applications.

Amelio quits National, reportedly to take Apple helm

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The search is on this week at National Semiconductor Corp. to replace CEO Gilbert Amelio, who resigned Friday, apparently to take the helm of troubled Apple Computer Inc.

At press time, all National would say was that Amelio quit his posts as president, chief executiv e and chairman of National, but officials there declined to comment on his plans. Apple officials, likewise, declined to comment, but published reports said Amelio, an Apple board member, would replace chief executive officer Michael Spindler. Amelio reportedly would become chairman as well, with current chair A.C. "Mike" Markkula becoming vice chairman.

For now, National will be run jointly by the office of the president, consisting of Ellen Hancock, Kirk Pond and Richard Beyer. Amelio came to then-struggling National in 1991 from Rockwell at the end of the Charlie Sporck era at National. Amelio slashed the payroll, closed obsolete fabs and brought a market--rather than component--focus to the company as he returned National to profitability.

Reports have said that Apple, which lost $69 million in its most recent quarter and laid off 1,300 workers, and Sun Microsystems Inc. were engaged in merger talks but could not agree on a price.

U.S., Japan to hold IC trade talks

WASHINGTON -- U.S. and Japanese trade officials will meet this week in Los Angeles to review foreign semiconductor sales in Japan, with the U.S. sure to raise the issue of extending the 1991 semiconductor agreement, officials said.

Meanwhile, Japan is taking its case for ending the trade agreement to the Internet. The EIA of Japan last week unveiled a Web site containing data on the bilateral agreement. The site includes a white paper recently released by Japan's MITI that makes the case for ending the agreement, which expires in July.

The EIAJ can be found on the Web at http://www.eiaj.org/semiconductor/home.htm.

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