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

02/22/96

Neural net diagnoses fault in Navy chopper; saves lives

Unique Army transceiver has spread-spectrum architecture

Kasparov still king, but computer a winner

From FPGA '96: new technologies abound

Lattice, Cypress, AMD add to PLD lines
What's new(s) at EE Times-interactive

02/21/96

Microsoft to stick with ActiveVRML

Viewlogic merges acquired technology to introduces 'Isis'

IBM pushes private ATM

Board-designer certification moves ahead erratically

Cordless mice proliferate

02/20/96

Flash card from Toshiba finds friends

Nintendo delays 64-bit-game launch

Aspec tool offers design portability

U.K. licenses telcos for 10-GHz radio

Cirrus: consumer PC outlook weak

02/19/96

Intel P7 to run 64-bit Unix OS from HP and SCO

Telecom reform: Cable struggles to exploit its advantages

Synopsys joins with IBM for EDA development

Fujitsu to take on U.S. notebook PC market

ISD ups ante in multilevel-cell memo ry

SIA presses U.S. on Japan trade pact

Upstart VRML group sees big-time support

Neural net diagnoses fault in Navy chopper; saves lives

By R. Colin Johnson

NEWARK, N.J. -- A neural network designed by professors Mark Gluck and Catherine Myers at Rutgers University here has diagnosed a fault that had slipped past the service crew of a multi-million-dollar CH-46 Navy helicopter. Discovery of the fault by the prototype neural net, still under test at the time it found the defect, prevented development of a life-threatening problem in the helicopter's gear box.

As a result, the Navy has contracted to install neural-based fault-detection systems on all o f its CH-46 helicopters this year.

"Though the neural net was only in the testing stages, this maturing technology already has proven it's capable of outperforming conventional methods of testing," said rear admiral Marc Pelaez, chief of naval research.

The Gluck/Myers team's research is based on an exploration of learning and memory, with particular emphasis on the hippocampus; their neural network model was dubbed Hippo.

The model was used to create the helicopter fault-detector prototype, which can learn with fewer examples than ordinary neural nets while offering more generalization. In short, Hippo is more accurate than conventional networks in detecting novel situations, such as imminent helicopter-gear-box failures.

Unique Army transceiver has spread-spectrum architecture

By Gail Robinson

ADELPHI, Md. -- Scientists at the Army Research Laboratory here and at the Univ ersity of Maryland, College Park, have successfully demonstrated an optoelectronic transceiver that uses a novel spread-spectrum architecture.

Using picosecond photoconductivity to produce a time-hopped, radio-frequency spread-spectrum signal, the transceiver boasts picosecond response time and precise timing capabilities. It offers a 2-GHz bandwidth, but bandwidths of tens to hundreds of GHz are said to be possible through the use of shorter laser pulses, faster photodiodes and larger-bandwidth amplifiers.

Aimed at privacy needs for applications such as cellular phones, the ultra-wideband transceiver overcomes the speed obstacles of digital electronics, which can limit performance.

"Designing a system that produces a time-hopped sequence optically is important, because it is difficult to generate precisely timed pulses using conventional electronics," said Eric Funk, a post-doctorate researcher at the Army lab. "With optics we have very precise control over timing."

Kasparov still king, but computer a winner

By Chappell Brown

PHILADELPHIA -- Like Bob Dole's hair's-breadth victory in the Iowa Republican caucuses, world chess champion Gary Kasparov's win against an IBM computer the same week was too narrow to warrant a blowout victory party.

The computer, Deep Blue, had Kasparov on the ropes much of the time, possibly rattled by the computer's easy win in the opening match. The estimated 6 million cybernauts tracking the six-game play over the Internet were treated to the spectacle of the best chess mind humanity has to offer struggling to outwit a machine performing rote computations.

After a win by Kasparov and then two matches that ended in draws, the human player acknowledged that the machine was indistinguishable from a grand master. "This was a serious opponent," said the 32-year-old Russian.

That admission raises one of the core philosophical issues of the computer age: To what extent is human thought and creativity simply a glorified computation?

Computers first automated only the most repetitive of tasks, but the growing understanding of how to cast human expertise into machine form, combined with the relentless acceleration of brute computational capability, is pushing automation into higher intellectual realms.

From FPGA '96: new technologies abound

By Ron Wilson

Monterey, Calif. -- University researchers presented new material on FPGA architectures, users demonstrated amazing ingenuity with existing devices and designers from the industry countered with their own issues at the FPGA '96 forum recently.

Alireza Daviani from the University of Toronto--a hotbed of FPGA research--described a hybrid chip that contained both FPGA logic cells and programmable-logic-array product-term matrices. Daviani's work indicated that for at least the benchmarks studied, such a hybrid device would achieve twice the density of a conventional FPGA.

Considerable attention was focused on universal logic modules (ULM), which are a potential alternative to the look-up tables (LUT) used in most conventional FPGAs.

Perhaps the most unusual paper was presented by Kengo Azegami, a Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. researcher. Azegami argued that from the ASIC vendor's point of view, most designs could be partitioned into a relatively stable but speed-critical portion and one that must remain programmable. The goal was to combine the implementation of those two pieces onto one die.

An equally remarkable paper from Eduardo Boemo of the Polytechnic University of Madrid described the application of wave-pipelining techniques to existing LUT-based FPGAs.

Lattice, Cypress, AMD add to PLD lines

By Ron Wilson

HILLSBORO, Ore. -- Progra mmable-logic vendors seem to have picked February for filling out product lines. Announcements in recent weeks have added fast parts to one family, slow parts to another and moderate-density speed demons to two other families of PLDs.

In the fast department, Lattice Semiconductor Corp. announced a very fast pair of generic array logic, or GALs. The parts are both 3.3-V, 28-pin devices built in Lattice's latest process.

At the other end of the spectrum, Cypress Semiconductor has filled out its own line of GAL-compatible 28-pin PLDs. The company unveiled the PALCE16V8 and PALCE20V8. These parts are flash-programmed rather than E2PROM-based, and are available in quad small-outline as well as the usual PLCC, dual in-line and small-outline IC packaging.

Meanwhile, there is renewed activity on the moderate-density PLD front as well. Advanced Micro Devices, which continues to have loyal adherents for its Mach family, is adding in-system programming to its newest family. The company last week announced t he Mach 211SP and 231SP, either of which can be programmed through its JTAG port in under five seconds, according to AMD.

Microsoft to stick with ActiveVRML

By Brian Santo

REDMOND, Wash. -- Microsoft recently indicated that it will bring its ActiveVRML standard to the market, no matter what happens with the current effort to define an open Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) 2.0 standard.

At the beginning of the year, the VRML Architecture Group (VAG) issued a request for proposals (RFP) for the 2.0 version of VRML. Most people involved have said they expect the final VRML 2.0 spec to incorporate the best attributes of the half dozen proposals submitted.

In a recent interview with EE Times, David Britton, group marketing manager of Microsoft Windows 95 multimedia, said that Microsoft will remain involved in the process of defining a VRML 2.0 spec, but when asked whether it is possible that the market could see separate VRML standards--VRML 2.0 and ActiveVRML--Britton would only say that "Microsoft is committed to supporting open standards."

Viewlogic merges acquired technology to introduces 'Isis'

By Richard Goering

MARLBORO, Mass. -- Edging closer to the pc-board design world, Viewlogic Systems Inc. has introduced Isis, an environment that combines Quad Design timing-analysis and signal-integrity tools with placement-and-routing technology from Cooper & Chyan Technology (Cupertino, Calif.). Isis was announced last week in a multicity, interactive TV satellite broadcast.

At the same time, Viewlogic announced Modelsite, a World- Wide Web site that provides access to models for signal-integrity analysis, pc-board placement, schematic capture, timing analysis and logic simulation. It's accessible through the company's home page at http://www.v iewlogic.com.

Isis is not a full-fledged pc-board CAD system. Aimed more at design engineers than layout personnel, it provides a high-level interconnect analysis through such capabilities as floor planning, or auto-interactive placement with analysis tools; auto-interactive routing; automatic constraint generation; and a spreadsheet-like Constraint Management System (CMS).

IBM pushes private ATM

By Loring Wirbel

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- IBM Corp.'s networking hardware division is trying to make private asynchronous-transfer-mode networks affordable for the masses by moving its Nways switch architecture down to 25.6-Mbit/second interfaces. The ATM 8285 Nways workgroup switch is the centerpiece of a hardware/software "launch kit," including full LAN-emulation-server functions, that switching vice president Rick McGee claims "leaves no reason not to install ATM."

At its Business Partner Executive Conference in early February, IBM launched a special NETeam educational and support program for resellers and dealers as a part of its Switched Virtual Networking initiative. IBM backs an early move from 16-Mbit/s token-ring networks to low-speed ATM and is promoting the 8285 workgroup switch as perhaps the most cost-effective of the Nways series.

IBM was one of the first to ship 25-Mbit Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) cards, supplying them in its TurboWays adapter family. But it has needed a low-end workgroup switch to augment the enterprise Nways family. The 8285 can be configured for 12, 24, 36 or 48 users at a cost as low as $495 per user.

Board-designer certification moves ahead erratically

By Terry Costlow

NORTHBROOK, Ill. -- The push to raise the status of board-layout designers is moving forward, though somewhat erratically. A certifica tion program established by the Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits (IPC) is in place but a lack of training tools has made it difficult to pass the exam.

A little more than a year ago, the IPC decided that board-layout people needed outside help to improve their position within their companies. A series of tests--loosely similar to those administered for CPAs and lawyers--was developed to give board-layout specialists a way to prove their level of understanding. Beta testing of the exam began in the fourth quarter, but actual rollout has proven to be as complex as rolling out a new category of an electronic product.

"It's been a bit of a rocky road," said Thom Dammrich, president of the IPC. "We had a lot of people involved in the development; we got a lot of professional help to get it up and running.

"But the testing portion got done first instead of the training program," he added. "People are interested in it and supportive of it but a lot of them wonder why we ha ven't done the training portion. Since we haven't done much in training, we've had a slightly higher failure rate than we'd like."

Cordless mice proliferate

CAMARILLO, Calif. -- Pointing the way to an emerging class of living-room PCs, Interlink Electronics Inc. has rolled out cordless mice products and components. The peripherals are all based on an innovative pressure sensor that is also available for licensing.

The company hopes the products will help its OEM business rebound after losing a design-in with some models of the IBM ThinkPad notebook computer. Interlink's Remote Point infrared mouse was bundled with the ThinkPad two years ago until competitor Mindpath Technologies--since acquired by Xircom--came out with a similar mouse sporting four programmable buttons now being shipped with the ThinkPads.

Remote Point Plus, formally launched this month, is Interlink's response t o the competition with its own four-button, programmable pointer. "Now we've caught up," a spokesman said.

The model is based on a proprietary infrared implementation using components from Sharp Corp. The mouse, which runs on two AAA batteries offers a primary and secondary mouse-click button in addition to the four programmable buttons.

Flash card from Toshiba finds friends

By David Lammers

KAWASAKI, Japan -- Toshiba Corp. will announce this week that it has signed up three major supporters in Japan for its wafer-thin solid-state floppy-disk card (SSFDC).

Fuji Photo Film, Sega Enterprises and Olympus Optical will join Toshiba in setting up a forum to promote the SSFDC among manufacturers of digital still cameras, personal digital assistants, cellular phones, voice recorders, game machines and other consumer products. At least one major U.S. company reportedly intends to design the card into its products.

The SSFDC activity follows January's formation of the Intel Corp.-led Miniature Card alliance to promote that smaller-than-PCMCIA card. At the same time, SanDisk is pushing its CompactFlash card.

Samsung Electronics, meanwhile, is expected to announce soon that it will build NAND-based flash cards to the SSFDC standard, providing a second source.

Though the width (37 mm) and length (45 mm) of the SSFDC are about the same as the Miniature Card, it's about one-third the area of a PCMCIA card, weighs only 1.8 grams and is designed to enclose a single flash memory. The Miniature Card is 3.5 mm thick and can have devices on both sides of the substrate. Both the SSFDC and the Miniature Card are aimed at consumer products, but the SSFDC will be less expensive to manufacture, a Toshiba engineer said.

Nintendo delays 64-bit-game launch

TOKYO -- Nintendo has po stponed for the second time the U.S. launch of its 64-bit game machine, from April to Sept. 30, apparently because of a shortage of silicon components.

The company had predicted that the box, Nintendo 64 (N64), would generate first-year sales in Japan of 3 million units. The silicon supplier, NEC, said it has been producing the core chips--a MIPS R4300i microprocessor and co-processor and Rambus DRAMs--at a rate of 200,000/month since January. But NEC plans to ramp to 500,000 units later. Nintendo, however, decided that it's not nearly enough for the company to put together systems in massive volume in time for a promised April launch.

A Nintendo spokesman in Japan last week denied a press report that suggested the company would hold back its Japan introduction until the summer. A late-April launch in Japan is still planned.

Aspec tool offers design portability

By Craig Matsumoto

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Aspec Technology Inc. will unveil software this week that ports semiconductor designs to new foundries or smaller geometries, possibly easing some designer headaches.

Its QuickPort software claims to convert placed-and-routed IC designs within hours and to optimize them for the new foundry or feature size. It works with Aspec's high-density (HD) family of ASIC architectures, available from 0.8 to 0.35 micron.

With QuickPort, designers are able to find a second source for a product more quickly. After signing up with a foundry, designers can port the chip design to a new process without having to resynthesize, making it faster to bring second sources up to production.

The catch is that the original and destination processes must be included in Aspec's HD library. Otherwise, a customer has to wait 45 days for the processes to be written.

Aspec now has 30 processes from pure foundries such as Chartered Semiconductor and United Microelectronics Corp. and semiconductor houses like Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Integrated Device Technology Inc.

U.K. licenses telcos for 10-GHz radio

LONDON -- Internet access and video telephony could receive a boost in the U.K. from the licensing of high-bandwidth radio links to phone operators.

The U.K. government has announced three licenses for telephone operators to provide ISDN digital-telephone access using radio in the local loop at 10 GHz. The winners, who receive 60 MHz of radio spectrum, are Mercury Communications Ltd., Ionica Ltd. and Scottish Telecom, working together, and National Transcommunications Ltd.

The licenses will be issued in the summer, with the infrastructure building to follow. Services are expected to be offered in 1997.

The system will be used to provide small and medium-sized businesses as well as public institutions, such as schools and libraries, with voice, video and data services.

The U.K. government also awarded licenses at 2 GHz to British Telecommunications and a startup, RadioTEL Systems, that intends to improve telephone access for customers in rural areas of the U.K.

Cirrus: consumer PC outlook weak

Fremont, Calif. -- Officials at Cirrus Logic, who reported last week that the company will lose money in its most recent quarter because of poor demand in the PC sector, said that market sector might not improve much until next year.

"Right now, our customers are stepping back to evaluate the situation, looking at their inventory levels and trying to estimate what consumers will do in 1996," said George Alexy, Cirrus' senior vice president. "It is a real possibility that the market [for consumer PCs] overall will stay flat, at the run rate of the fourth quarter of 1995--that would be about 10 percent annual growth." The commercial desktop business, still 60 perc ent of total PC sales, appears strong, he noted.

Cirrus said last week that a drop in orders will prompt the company to expect a loss in the fiscal fourth quarter, which will end March 30. Analysts had expected a profit of approximately $9 million.

Cirrus also restated its results for the fiscal third quarter, which ended Dec. 30, to include a $13.5-million inventory writedown and a charge of $5 million for underuse of its joint-venture fab, Micrus, with IBM. The restated net loss is $3.6 million, compared with the previously announced net income of $9 million.

Cirrus also is backing out of negotiations with Digital Equipment Corp., begun in December, over additional capacity at Digital's Fab 8 in Hudson, Mass.

Intel P7 to run 64-bit Unix OS from HP and SCO

By Alexander Wolfe

SAN FRANCISCO -- Hewlett-Packard Co. last week disclosed that a new 64-bit Unix operating system will f orm the software foundation for the upcoming Merced--also known as P7--microprocessor that's being jointly developed by Intel and HP.

In an announcement at the Uniforum '96 conference, here, Intel revealed that Merced will run a next-generation implementation of Unix that is in the works. Called "Summit 3D," the Unix release will sport a highly modular architecture, a multithreaded kernel and support for symmetric multiprocessing. Summit 3D is being written by HP and SCO (Santa Cruz, Calif.).

Said Richard Sevcik, general manager of HP's systems technology group: "We expect to be writing file systems that are optimized to run on Merced technology and can take advantage of parallelism. We believe we'll be able to optimize the OS to the microprocessor architecture in a way that's never been done before."

The Summit 3D OS will also be released in versions running on MIPS and PA-RISC processor architectures, along with versions for the Pentium and Pentium Pro CPUs. The first software is slated to hit t he streets next year. It's unclear when the Merced Unix code will be released.

Telecom reform: Cable struggles to exploit its advantages

By Junko Yoshida

With the new telecommunications act having freed them to tap the data-delivery market, cable operators are revving their efforts to deploy cable modems in volume for high-speed data service to the home. But before they can do so, cable companies must transform their current, one-way infrastructure into an interoperable, two-way network.

If properly implemented, the new platform--with the potential to download data hundreds of times faster than ISDN--will offer the capabilities needed to compete against the phone companies in the data-delivery market. The question is how fast the cable industry can make the transition. Battered by the market failure of the digital set-top box, the industry can't afford to drag its heels in resolving th e compatibility issues.

For an industry accustomed to closed, proprietary network implementations, building an open, two-way platform requires more than a leap of faith. Network architectures and cable-modem designs have already proliferated, and the industry must achieve consensus on several fronts: the interface between the cable modem and a personal computer, the connection between cable networks and WANs, and a number of crucial software interfaces within the cable link itself.

One critical step in the right direction has been the industry's commitment to support a retail model for cable modems.

Synopsys joins with IBM for EDA development

By Richard Goering

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Tapping a rich vein of EDA technology that could help carry designers into the next century, Synopsys Inc. has announced a six-year technology-development pact with IBM Microelectronics (Fishkill, N. Y.). For $41 million, Synopsys acquires rights to selected IBM EDA technology, which will help develop tools for sub-0.25-micron, multimillion-gate ICs.

The agreement gives Synopsys, already the synthesis market leader, access to a mother lode of technology in synthesis, timing analysis, test and design planning. As a result, Synopsys hopes to become a contender in the race to develop an integrated, deep-submicron tool suite. Experts have said that such a set, coupling front-end synthesis tools with back-end place, route and timing tools, will be critical to sub-0.35-micron designs.

Indeed, IBM's back-end capabilities are proven. Though the company's earlier attempt to market its own EDA technology fizzled, IBM has been using that technology to design million-gate, 0.25-micron ICs.

Besides the technology purchase, joint R&D teams from the two companies will develop EDA tools to be marketed externally by Synopsys. One side-effect might be stiffer competition between Synopsys and existing provid ers of timing-analysis and floor-planning tools.

Fujitsu to take on U.S. notebook PC market

Tokyo -- Fujitsu Ltd., which stormed Japan's PC market last year with low-cost desktops, last week said it would set up a U.S. company to focus initially on high-performance notebooks. Fujitsu's production facility in Hillsboro, Ore., will build a Pentium notebook that will hit the market in the second quarter.

Capitalized with $50 million from the parent company, Fujitsu PC Corp. will set up shop in Milpitas, Calif., including a design and development center. A recruiting drive is under way for engineers and marketing staff.

"Fujitsu's strengths in high-resolution flat-panel displays, disk drives and ICs will give us a competitive edge," said a spokesman. Last year, Fujitsu tripled its personal-computer sales in Japan, though it lost money on every system.

ISD ups ante in multilevel-cell memory

By Brian Fuller

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Integrated Storage Devices Inc. (ISD) today will double the ante in multilevel-cell non-volatile-memory architectures by claiming it can stuff 4 bits into a single digital cell.

ISD's 4X technology manages twice the amount of memory per cell than Intel Corp. announced it had achieved in 1994 (search our archive for story, Aug. 1, 1994, page 1). Recent technical papers from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Seoul, South Korea) and NEC Corp. (Sagamihara, Japan) also described 2-bit-per-cell approaches to flash-memory devices (search Feb. 12, page 20).

The ISD announcement is a surprise development from a low-key company that has made a good business in analog memory chips using similar multilevel storage techniques.

While the company refused to disclose technical details and has no immediate product plans, the news sets the stage for a showdown i n digital flash. To date, no one has commercialized a multilevel cell device, and concerns linger over the ability to manufacture such devices cost-effectively in volume.

SIA presses U.S. on Japan trade pact

WASHINGTON -- U.S. chip makers are lobbying the Clinton administration to press Japan to renew the U.S.-Japan semiconductor agreement during a meeting this weekend between President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto.

The two leaders are scheduled to meet for the first time Saturday in Los Angeles. Though Japanese officials insisted there is no agenda for the meeting, semiconductor and other trade issues are expected to remain on the front burner prior to Clinton's state visit to Japan in April.

Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) officials meeting here last week said they are urging the White House to ratchet up the pressure on Tokyo to extend the pact, whi ch is scheduled to expire July 31. Japanese officials said in a recent white paper that "we will not renew or extend the [semiconductor agreement] in any form".

Nevertheless, officials at the SIA said that it was all but certain that President Clinton will raise the semiconductor-trade issue during the meeting with Hashimoto.

U.S. officials have hinted at possible compromises, including dropping the 20-percent foreign-market-share goal.

As the stalemate continues, European chip makers have demanded to be included if the pact is extended.

Upstart VRML group sees big-time support

By Brian Santo

MANHASSET, N.Y. -- Major systems and software players are pushing the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) 3-D file format from obscurity to prominence as the promised enabler of truly interactive 3-D Internet applications.

Apple Computer Inc., IBM Japan, Microsoft Corp., Silicon G raphics Inc. (SGI), Sun Microsystems Inc. and a consortium of German research labs have separately responded to a request for proposals for the 2.0 version of VRML. And last week, Netscape Communications Corp. bought Paper Software Inc., a small company that contributed to the SGI-spearheaded submission.

These corporate heavyweights have the wherewithal to duke it out in the open market, yet they are steering a conciliatory course in agreeing to place the decision-making process for the potentially vital standard in the hands of a ragtag band of 3-D enthusiasts, organized as the VRML Architecture Group (VAG).

Though VRML is relatively unknown, the companies believe the revised standard could enable the interactive 3-D applications that will spark greater consumer demand for Web access--and for the faster, more powerful computing equipment required to run the interactive 3-D applications.

The VRML Architecture Group: http://vag.vrml.org/

Active VRML (Microsoft): http://www.microsoft.com/intde v/avr

Dynamic Worlds (The German National Research Center for Information Technology) http://wintermute.gmd.de:8000/vrml/dynamicWorlds.html

HoloWeb (Sun): http://www.sunlabs.com/research/tcm/holoweb.ps

Moving Worlds (SGI, others): http://webspace.sgi.com/moving-worlds

Out of this World (Apple): http://product.info.apple.com/qd3d/VRML20/Out_Of_This_World.HTML

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