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

04/26/96

Philips plans to turn PDA into handheld communicator

Intel plans MLC flash to take on NAND cells

RISC controller designed for battery-operated applications

TranSwitch hopes SAR approach will boost ATM

Toshiba, Samsung, developing chips for memory cards

100 Base T2 standard set for IEEE ballot

Jessi follow-on, Medea, fully funded for '97 launch
What's new(s) at EE Times-interactive

04/25/96

Startup Synchronicity preps EDA 'groupware'

Cisco to acquire Stratacom

Olympic team to offer digital broadcasting

Prestowitz urges renewal of U.S.-Japan IC trade pact

Picture brighter for TFT-display makers

04/24/96

Moto shuffles managers in semicon reorganization

04/23/96

Avant! volleys in Cadence lawsuit

Cray Computer sale faces challenge

Altera ships 100k-gate PLD

Analog VHDL schism resolved

Four team to drive Fiber Channel

Another mini-card format proposed

04/22/96

Copyright spat gets uglier; DVD intro threatened

Sun's Ultrasparc will have native support for Java

Cadence to support design of Cyrix' 7th-generation x86

Polysilicon flat panel displays emerge as LCD alternative

DOD agencies squabble over control of new satcom system

From NAB: HDTV suffers regulatory setback

LCDs to invade CRT turf

Lockheed Martin , Chips, team on 3-D graphics accelerator

Motorola taps neural tech for robust speech recognition

Philips plans to turn PDA into handheld communicator

By Craig Matsumoto

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Philips Semiconductors plans to release on Monday a two-chip extension of its one-chip personal digital assistant (PDA) unveiled in November. The two-chip set and accompanying PDA reference platform are aimed at what it calls the personal intelligent communicator (PIC) market.

The company is distinguishing between the low-end PDA, typically used as a personal organizer, and a PIC, which fulfills the PDA's original goal of adding communications functions to a handheld computer.

"Most of the true high volume today is in the organizers, the low-end PDA," said Fadi Azhari, marketing manager for Philips Semi's communications multimedia group. Philips does expect the PIC market to take off, however, as PDAs' power consumption and bulky form factor are improved, he said.

The two-chip set features compactness. "If you look at the personal communicators that are out there, you need five chips and a modem chip set," Azhari said.

The primary chip is the PR31100, a variation of the PR30100 one-chip PDA. It uses a 32-bit MIPS R3000 core surrounded by on-chip peripherals.

Intel plans MLC flash to take on NAND cells

By David Lammers

TOKYO -- Intel Corp. plans to market early next year a 64-Mbit flash memory that uses multi-level cell (MLC) technology to store 2 bits in each memory cell.

For Intel and other purveyors of NOR-type flash memory, MLC technology provides a way to compete against serial flash devices, notably the NAND-type memories produced by Toshiba and its licensee, Samsung Electronics.

"We take NAND very seriously, but we believe that with our high volumes, using our Etox process with MLC as the kicker, we can be cheaper than NAND," said Bill Howe, general manager of Intel's memory components division.

Though he declined to provide details, Howe said that Intel engineers have developed more efficient peripheral circuitry, which senses the two voltage levels used in MLC memories but without sacrificing much speed. Using MLC requires trade-offs, including giving up very low-voltage operation, a limit of about 100,000 write/erase cycles, or a narrower temperature operational range, he noted.

RISC controller designed for battery-operated applications

By Peter Clarke

NEUCHATEL, Switzerland -- The group that brought the Swiss watch business into the electronic age is applying its experience to a microcontroller that could give some RISC CPU vendors a run for their (battery) life.

CSEM (Centre Suisse d'Electronique et Microtechnique SA), a research institute here and a specialist in mixed-signal and extreme low-power design in the watch industry, has designed a RISC microcontroller core for battery-operated, portable and body-worn computers and instruments.

The result of an 18-month design effort, the CoolRISC architecture scales from 4-bit to 24-bit word lengths and can achieve Mips/W ratings as high as 22,000 when powered at 1.5 V. With a transistor count of just 3,500, the simplest 8-bit core occupies just 0.4 square mm in a 1-micron process.

David Shiels, head of marketing for the IC design division of CSEM, explained that the designers have first silicon on an 8-bit version of the CoolRISC core but that the plan is to offer as many as 10 core variants as building blocks within CSEM-designed custom ASICs.

TranSwitch hopes SAR approach will boost ATM

By Loring Wirbel

SHELTON, Conn. -- Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) continues its move into the mainstream communications market in coming weeks, when TranSwitch Corp. details a new approach to the crucial segmentation/reassembly (SAR) processor function.

TranSwitch will discuss the Sara-II architecture with potential OEM customers at ATM Year 96 conference, at the San Jose Civic Auditorium.

Rather than rely on an external coprocessor or an insertable merchant RISC core, TranSwitch has designed its own RISC controller. It will sit at the heart of Sara-II, the company's SAR processor, which is scheduled to move into beta testing in the summer.

A SAR device is perhaps the most critical semiconductor in an ATM network, outside the switching-fabric chip that actually switches the 53-byte ATM cells. SARs take packetized data, as well as isochronous voice and video services, and package the traffic into ATM cells, adding headers that contain information about the destination and type of traffic. At a receiver, SARs reassemble ATM cells into either variable-sized data packets or streaming voice or video information.

Toshiba, Samsung, developing chips for memory cards

By David Lammers

TOKYO -- Toshiba Corp. and Samsung Electronics Corp. are co-developing a 128-Mbit NAND-type flash device that uses multilevel-cell (MLC) technology to store two bits in every memory cell. Also, the two companies expect to have a 64-Mbit NAND chip in production by the fourth quarter tailored for the stamp-size Solid State Floppy Disk (SSFD) card format supported by many of Japan's consumer-electronics manufacturers, said Koichi Suzuki, in charge of Toshiba's semiconductor operations.

Also this week, Toshiba announced it has lined up 37 companies in an "SSFDC forum", and will recruit supporters in the Unit ed States and Europe this spring as well.

The SSFD card will compete with the Miniature Card supported by the four biggest makers of flash devices--Intel, Sharp, AMD and Fujitsu--as well as Microsoft Corp. and Compaq Computer Corp. SanDisk Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) and its supporters are backing the Compact Flash card, another smaller-than-PCMCIA format. All of the small cards can be placed in adapters that fit into PCMCIA slots.

The SSFD card measures 45 x 37 x 0.76 mm, is 0.76 mm thick and weighs just 1.8 grams. Because it is essentially a single die overmolded into a plastic package, Toshiba contends it will be much cheaper to produce than the larger, metal-encased Miniature Card.

100 Base T2 standard set for IEEE ballot

By Ashok Bindra

MORGANVILLE, N.J. -- The 100 Base T2 Fast Ethernet draft is up for ballot at the IEEE 802.3 committee. Supported by some 25 compan ies, the standard aims at local-area-network (LAN) cabling environments and is slated for year-end approval, said T2 task-force chairman Scot Carter.

By permitting 100-Mbit/second full-duplex transmission over voice-grade cable, 100 Base T2 alleviates the shortcomings of current high-speed network standards, said Juan Jover, vice president of marketing for Silicon Design Experts Inc. (SDE), which is leading the standards effort.

Being touted as a plug-in replacement for 10 Base T, the proposed standard promises 10/100-Mbit/s combo cards and runs on the same cable that is used for 10 Mbits/s (Cat 3) transmission. And while 100 Base TX will dominate Fast Ethernet, there will be a sizable niche for T2, said Carter.

Two specs that are critical for the progress of this standardization effort were resolved this week. First is the length of the scrambler. The standard length was set to at least 33 bits, as recommended by SDE's simulation and theoretical analyses.

The other involves the start up operation for the transceiver. The digital signal processing (DSP) blocks would be trained blindly using statistical averaging of signals to guarantee the reliability of the transceiver operation.

Jessi follow-on, Medea, fully funded for '97 launch

By Peter Clarke

BRUGES, Belgium -- Medea, the proposed European follow-on to the Joint European Submicron Semiconductor Initiative (Jessi), has been fully funded and is on target for an early-1997 launch.

The Micro-Electronics Development for European Applications received the full $2.5 billion it had sought. At a recent meeting here, Medea was endorsed by the High Level Group of Eureka without any cuts in the proposed funding or any modifications to the planned applications areas.

Eureka is a European-wide initiative for industrial R&D co-operation. The High Level Group is composed of representatives of the governm ents of more than 20 nations. During a Eureka ministerial conference at the end of June in Brussels, Medea is expected to be formally announced as a four-year project.

Horst Nasko, chairman of Jessi, said the High Level Group's endorsement signals a green light to Medea, allowing the program to start immediately after the eight-year Jessi project closes at the end of 1996. Jessi, which was also organized under Eureka, is credited with closing a technology gap, particularly in IC manufacturing, that was opening between Europe and its competitors in the United States, Asia and Japan in the late 1980s.

Startup Synchronicity preps EDA 'groupware'

By Richard Goering

BOSTON -- A company founded primarily by ex-Viewlogic executives, Synchronicity Inc., is looking to make its mark in the emerging field of EDA-related " groupware." But the startup must navigate a rocky road littered with the wreckage of third-party framework providers and avoid collisions with large EDA vendors and product-data-management (PDM) suppliers.

Synchronicity is developing software for late-1996 delivery that will help dispersed engineering teams communicate and manage design data. Leveraging Internet standards, the products will provide such capabilities as process management, revision control, configuration management, design reuse and decision support. The software will run on both Unix and Windows platforms.

The idea, said Dennis Harmon, president and co-founder of Synchronicity, is like Lotus Notes for engineers. "Electronic companies are trying to use Lotus Notes, but it's not very good for managing information," he said. "The information in electronic engineering is far more complicated than it is in office automation."

Cisco to acquire Stratacom

By Loring Wirbel

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- LAN-internetworking vendor Cisco Systems Inc. has agreed to acquire WAN-switching specialist Stratacom Inc. in a stock-swap deal valued at $4 billion. Market watchers called the merger the largest ever in the internetworking field.

The agreement tops all previous deals struck by Cisco, a merger-and-acquisition leader in internetworking. According to the terms, shares of Cisco common stock would be exchanged for all common shares of StrataCom at a rate of one Cisco share or $50 for each Stratacom share, provided Cisco's price does not drop below $41 per share. If the price does slip below that figure, each Stratacom share would be exchanged for 1.22 shares of Cisco.

Stratacom dominates the wide-area-network-switching market for frame-relay and asynchronous-transfer-mode (ATM) switching, competing against against Cascade Communications Corp., Newbridge Networks Inc. and General DataComm Inc. (GDC). Cisco is exp ected to combine the Stratacom BPX and IPX switches with its own LightStream ATM switches to offer end-to-end LAN/WAN switching that will rival similar architectures from Newbridge and GDC.

The acquisition reflects the realization that Cisco will need to be a top vendor in WAN internetworking to thrive in the future, chief executive John Chambers said last week in a phone call with analysts.

Olympic team to offer digital broadcasting

By Junko Yoshida

ATLANTA -- Scientific-Atlanta Inc., Bell South and Panasonic will offer real-time digital-broadcast feeds of the Summer Olympic Games in a demonstration of a jointly developed synchronous optical network (Sonet)-based video- and data-delivery system.

The network, evocatively named Scarlet, will be "the most advanced digital video- and data-distribution network ever employed for news coverage at the Olympics," said Em met O'Donnell, technical director for Scientific-Atlanta's Olympic sponsorship.

Indeed, Scarlet would be the most extensive implementation to date of real-time digital broadcast services over land lines in the United States. Only such digital broadcast satellite services as DirecTv have achieved comparable scope.

Bell South is laying 400,000 miles of fiber-optic cable that will connect all 40 Olympic venues. Scientific-Atlanta will install 57 units of MPEG-2 real-time digital video encoders at the International Broadcast Center, seven digital hubs and 40 miniature cable networks built at various venues. More than 200 digital cameras provided by Panasonic will record a variety of events.

Prestowitz urges renewal of U.S.-Japan IC trade pact

By George Leopold

WASHINGTON -- A long-time critic of Japanese high-tech trade policy has weighed in in favor of renewing the U .S.-Japan semiconductor agreement.

Clyde Prestowitz, a former Reagan administration trade official who heads a Washington think tank, argues in a new study that most of the foreign market-share gains recorded over the last five years can be traced back to the chip accord. As a result, Prestowitz said, the agreement should be renewed on a government-to-government basis but without a numerical target for foreign market share in Japan. The current agreement that expires in July contains a 20-percent foreign market-share target, a goal that has been topped every quarter since the fourth quarter of 1993.

Moreover, Prestowitz and his co-authors argue, renewing the agreement is the best way to avoid the re-emergence of dumping in the U.S. market. Fears of renewed dumping have increased as the PC market softens.

Pointing to the steadily rising foreign share in its market, Japan has resisted intense U.S. pressure to renew the deal and has so far refused to negotiate a settlement of the dispute. Compl icating matters for both sides, the European Union has joined Tokyo in opposing renewal. Instead, it favors a "consultative organization" with a limited government role.

Picture brighter for TFT-display makers

By David Lammers

KAWASAKI, Japan -- After tumbling market share in 1995, things are looking up for the makers of active-matrix TFT LCDs.

"One year ago, there was an oversupply of panels in the 9.5- to 10.4-inch category, and the price dropped by half over a year's time," said Shobu Orihara, general manager of LCD technology development at Fujitsu Ltd. "But now, the market has changed again, favoring TFT screens at the larger sizes."

Manufacturers of difficult-to-handle, 550- x 650-mm glass substrates, the industry's largest, will be in a good position to supply active TFT displays to notebook PC makers this year.

Third-generation TFT factories can hand le the 550- x 650-mm substrates, which yield six 12.1-inch or 11.3-inch displays. Sharp's Mie factory and the Yasu factory recently completed by Display Technology Inc. (DTI; the IBM-Toshiba joint venture) are both ramping production. Samsung has a new factory coming on line, while Fujitsu and Hitachi announced plans recently to invest in third-generation factories that will come on stream in the second half of 1997.

Moto shuffles managers in semicon reorganization

By Martin Gold

PHOENIX -- Zvi Soha, general manager, Motorola Semiconductor Israel Ltd., has been given responsibility for the Semiconductor Products sector's DSP business as the new vice president and general manager of the DSP division. The move is part of Motorola's restructuring of the sector, in which several of its managers are being given new assignments.

It was in Israel under Soha where all of Mo torola's 24-bit DSPs were developed. Soha retains responsibility for the Israel design center.

Jim George, who headed the DSP operation for the past three years, will take over the sector's High-Performance Embedded Systems division as its vice president and general manager. George will have responsibility for the 680X0 family microprocessors and the Cold Fire processor among other high-end MPUs. He will not have the PowerPC line.

Tom Gunter, who who had the high-end embedded systems operation, now has the RISC microprocessor division and PowerPC product line.

Soha and George report to Fred Shlapak, general manager of Motorola's newly formed Communications & Advanced Consumer Technologies Group. Pete Bingham, manager of the mixed analog/digital IC operartion and L.J.Reed, who manages the ASICs operation also report to Shlapak.

Avant! volleys in Cadence lawsuit

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Avant! has hit back in the trade-secrets lawsuit brought by Cadence Design Systems Inc. against the upstart EDA vendor.

Early last week, lawyers for Avant! filed an amended counterclaim in U.S. District Court here. Cadence sued Avant! last year, charging it had stolen source code from Cadence and used it in Avant!'s popular placement-and-routing software.

Bruce Eastman, Avant! vice president of North American sales, said that both companies had signed an agreement in 1994 releasing each other from legal disputes arising from unfair competition or trade-secret theft. Cadence lawyers declined to comment on the specifics of the filing and were preparing a filing of their own late last week.

Avant! last week also reported a 60-percent jump in first-quarter earnings over the same period last year.

Cray Computer sale faces challenge

DENVER -- Cray C omputer Corp. shareholder William Kuntz III continued his single-handed efforts to prevent a complete Cray liquidation, going to separate venues in Denver and Colorado Springs last week to argue his case.

Kuntz asked for a tour of remaining Cray assets in storage at a northern Colorado Springs Cray site, but he was told by Cray president Terry Willkom that everything in that site had been sold off.

Kuntz was attempting on Friday to get a tour of Cray's former Colorado Springs headquarters, which M/A-Com plans to occupy for RF IC manufacturing.

Most courts have rejected Kuntz's efforts to prevent the liquidation, but he said his intent was to "give the shareholders a say in how the company is being broken apart and sold off."

Altera ships 100k-gate PLD

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Altera Corp. last week announced production shipments of what it believes is one of the indust ry's largest commercially available die. The EPF10K100 is the largest member of the Flex 10K FPGA family and reaches new levels with its sheer size, density and economy.

Altera chairman, CEO and president Rodney Smith said that the chip not only represents a large piece of real estate but also has the largest capacity of any PLD in the industry. Altera rates the device, which includes a mixture of conventional FPGA logic cells and programmable memory structures, at the equivalent of 100,000 gate-array gates.

The 10K100 will be introduced at $995 each in 100-piece lots.

Analog VHDL schism resolved

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The direction of an emerging analog VHDL standard has been set with the IEEE 1076.1 working group's decision to adopt "Opal," one of two competing proposals for the standard (see Feb. 26, page 1). Opal, backed by Analogy and Compass Design Automation, defea ted the "Jade" proposal from Mentor Graphics and its Anacad unit in a 38-to-11 vote.

Jean-Michel Berge, 1076.1 committee chair, said all participants have agreed to respect the vote and support the resulting language, and that the committee's goal is to go to the IEEE for formal balloting by the fall.

The Opal-vs.-Jade schism began in the 1076.1 Language Design Subcommittee, where two of three co-chairmen were authors of the Opal proposal. This proposal originated from work developed under a U.S. Air Force Rome Laboratories contract granted to Analogy, Compass and MTL Systems.

Four team to drive Fiber Channel

LAS VEGAS -- Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix, Avid Technology and Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems banded together last week at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention to promote Fiber Channel as their choice of a video-networking standard w ithin broadcast and post-production facilities.

The four are responding to the absence of an industry-standard network interface that allows faster-than-real-time video transfer between servers and non-linear editing systems. The lack of an industrywide consensus has made it difficult for broadcasters to mix and match their choice of digital studio equipment.

The four companies hope to see standards formulated by year's end.

Another mini-card format proposed

TOKYO -- Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. Ltd. has proposed another standard for the mini-flash memory card sector, which would compete with the Miniature Card being supported by Intel, Sharp, AMD and Fujitsu, as well as the Solid-State Floppy Disk (SSFD) developed by Toshiba and Samsung Electronics.

Named "Small PC Card," the proposed Matsushita Battery card features a 68-pin connector and is compatible with t he PCMCIA card standard. The size of the card is 36.4 x 42.8 x 3.3 mm; it can be put in an adapter that fits into a Type II PCMCIA slot. The card can accommodate various types of flash-memory ICs.

Matsushita Electronic Corp. and SanDisk Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) have a flash-memory alliance that supports the Compact Card standard developed by SanDisk. The Matsushita Battery proposal is separate from the Matsushita Electronics activity.

The various flash-card formats are vying for support. This week, Intel and Sharp are slated to make an announcement about taking their flash-memory alliance to the 0.4-micron level, and Toshiba is expected to announce that various companies have joined in support of the SSFD format.

Copyright spat gets uglier; DVD intro threatened

By Junko Yoshida

WASHINGTON -- It appears now that DVD, expected by many leading consumer electronics man ufacturers to become the hottest consumer product of this decade, will miss its scheduled launch in the Fall. Due to strong objections by the computer industry on copy protection issues, the commercialization of DVD is likely to be delayed for a year or longer.

The computer industry, completely at odds with the copyright management solution proposed by Hollywood studios and consumer electronics manufacturers, will "put a counter proposal on the table at a meeting scheduled on April 29th," according to a spokeswoman at Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a group of 30 computer and communications companies.

Together with the Business Software Alliance, representing several computer software companies including Microsoft, ITI is currently putting together "a list of requirements," and will present it to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA) during that meeting, the spokeswoman said.

The MPAA and CEMA will have n o response to the ITI proposal until they see it, but the discrepancy between what ITI and MPAA/CEMA believe in on the copyright protection issues looks too large for the opposing groups to find a resolution within a reasonable period.

The computer industry prefers "a voluntary standard process" for copyright protection rather than being told "exactly how to implement the copyright protection in [their computer] systems," the ITI spokeswoman said.

Also, the legal protection for copyrights "should cover all digital media including records, movies, images and texts," instead of singling out a protection for motion pictures, as MPAA and CEMA had proposed, she added.

Another hotly debated issue among computer manufacturers is whether the currently unregulated PC industry should accept the government-regulated copyright system proposed by Hollywood studios and consumer electronics manufacturers. "Frankly, we don't understand why the consumer electronics industry wants the government regulations on this," the ITI official said.

Resistance by CEMA and MPAA to the ITI proposal is almost assured, as ITI is essentially asking MPAA and CEMA to scrap everything they have agreed to between themselves, and to "go back to square one," the ITI spokeswoman acknowledged.

ITI hopes to have a new copyright management system standard developed by the computer industry blessed by international standards body such as ISO or IEEE, within the next six to 12 months. "By having good representations both from computer and consumer electronics manufacturers, we think we can really speed up the standardization process on the subject," the ITI spokeswoman said.

And that will certainly delay in the commercialization of DVD. The six- to 12-month process to create and certify a standard will derail every DVD manufacturer's schedule.

It was unclear at press time whether MPAA and EIA (CEMA's parent organization) plan to seek introduction of legislation of the Digital Video Recording Act of 1996 as origin ally planned as in late this month. The ITI spokeswoman said, "we heard that EIA has no plans to introduce the draft for legislation, at least for the near future."

However, Cynthia Upson, EIA spokeswoman, said last Friday that the group is continuing talks with the computer industry to find a mutually agreeable solution. "We are willing to talk about their concerns," Upson said. More talks are scheduled this week.

Sun's Ultrasparc will have native support for Java

By Alexander Wolfe

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Sun Microsystems last week pushed two big stacks of corporate chips onto the square marked "Java." On the high end, Sun revealed plans to roll native support for its Internet-aware programming language into its mainstream Ultrasparc microprocessor family next year. On the Java "client" side, chairman Scott McNealy made his strongest statement yet that Sun will release a low-cost Internet computer before the end of the year.

The microprocessor work--which will equip the next-generation Ultrasparc III to directly execute the Java instruction set--is expected to broaden considerably Sun's Java thrust in several respects.

For one, it could stanch the single biggest criticism of Java to date--that applications will suffer laggard performance because Java programs are typically interpreted from processor-independent "byte code," rather than compiled directly into optimized machine-specific binaries.

"If the chip doesn't have to translate, it can provide response in a very fast manner," said Anand Desai, group manager of high-performance compute products at Sun Microelectronics. "By putting it directly onto silicon, we'll have tremendous performance gains, because then the code doesn't have to be interpreted."

Cadence to support design of Cyrix' 7th-ge neration x86

By Richard Goering

RICHARDSON, Texas -- In what it termed an "unprecedented" agreement, Cadence Design Systems (San Jose, Calif.) will provide a broad range of technologies and services to help Cyrix Corp. design its seventh-generation X86 processor, the M3.

The multimillion-dollar deal calls for Cadence engineering teams to work on-site, providing new technology from Cadence Berkeley Labs in cycle-based simulation and formal verification. "This is a long-term commitment that is project-oriented, rather than us delivering a tool and wishing them good luck afterwards," said Patrick Scaglia, director of Cadence Berkeley Labs. "The project is done when the chip is in production."

Cadence also revealed that it has dropped plans to commercialize its cycle-based simulator, preferring to offer it as a service via agreements such as the Cyrix one.

While such project orientation is a different twist for EDA vendors, what's also unique is the nature of this particular arrangement, Scaglia said. "This is a very advanced microprocessor design, and people who do microprocessor designs have been relying on internal resources. From that perspective, this is a milestone."

Polysilicon flat panel displays emerge as LCD alternative

By David Lammers

YOKOHAMA, Japan -- Flat-panel displays fabricated with low-temperature polysilicon manufacturing processes are coming to market from several Japanese manufacturers. This has prompted a senior Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. manager, Masahiro Kosaka, to declare 1996 the technology's "takeoff year."

Prototypes in the 2- to 6-inch range were on show here at the Electronic Display Exposition (Edex), cosponsored by the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International association and the Electronic Industries Association of Japan. At next month's Society for Information Display conference, a number o f Japanese companies will describe their progress in using low-cost glass substrates instead of the expensive quartz required for high-temperature polysilicon.

At Edex, Matsushita showed a 2.8-inch display with 220,000 pixels that it will sample later this year and build into a Matsushita digital video camera coming to market in 1997. The 320- x 240-pixel display has a 50 percent aperture ratio, compared with about 30 percent for amorphous-silicon panels.

DOD agencies squabble over control of new satcom system

By Loring Wirbel

WASHINGTON -- A snafu has hit the military's new, multibillion-dollar Global Broadcast System (GBS), and the satellite-communications network isn't even online yet.

The network--which will deliver voice, video and data to the military and intelligence communities and serve their TCP/IP and asynchronous traffic mode (ATM) requirements well into the 21st century--is currently the subject of a turf dispute between two U.S. agencies.

National-security panelists revealed at the recent Space Symposium here that the National Reconnaissance Office is fighting attempts by the Defense Information Systems Agency and other DOD and intelligence groups to wrest control of GBS.

The DOD's new Joint Space Management Board (JSMB) is expected to rule on the matter soon. The DOD created the joint board in December to rein in the $6.2 billion Reconnaissance Office, which oversees the nation's spy satellites.

Close to $500 million has been allocated to GBS in the current fiscal year to test its usefulness in distributing voice, text, data, image and video services in a one-way simplex format. GBS will carry a mix of traffic, from unclassified e-mail and CNN news broadcasts to highly classified TCP/IP and ATM traffic.

From NAB: HDTV suffers regulatory setback

By George Leopold and Junko Yoshida

LAS VEGAS -- The U.S. transition to HDTV suffered another regulatory setback last week. During the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) meeting, the FCC announced a May 9 inquiry into whether the proposed Grand Alliance standard allows for advances in compression and other digital-broadcast technologies.

What's more, FCC chief Reed Hundt hinted that the Grand Alliance standard may not get an official stamp of approval.

The outlook for HDTV wasn't much brighter on the NAB floor. System vendors--designers of studio cameras, editing machines, broadcast servers and encoders--showed little evidence that they're about to ignite development of commercial systems tailored for HDTV.

But it was the latest regulatory twist that angered HDTV proponents. They are seeking quick adoption of a proposed standard that they insist has plenty of "head room" to accommodate advances in compression and other technologies. Moreover, t hey say, government approval would ensure market confidence while avoiding a repeat of earlier standards fiascos.

"The spectrum-auction issue has quieted down, and we were beginning to see that the industry is ready to go with digital. But now this," said James Carnes, head of David Sarnoff Research Center (Princeton, N.J.).

LCDs to invade CRT turf

By Yoshiko Hara

YOKOHAMA, Japan -- Japan's LCD vendors are serious about replacing a portion of the CRT-monitor market with LCD panels, judging by the activity at last week's Electronic Display Exhibition (Edex '96) here.

Sharp Corp. showed a 17.7-inch supertwisted-nematic (STN) panel that is claimed to cost less than active-matrix panels. NEC Corp. unveiled a prototype 20.1-inch, XGA-class, wide-viewing-angle thin-film-transistor (TFT)-LCD panel. And Hitachi Ltd. announced it is ready for mass-production of the Super TFT, which is claimed to offer a far wider viewing angle than conventional TFT LCDs. The monitor is sampling at about $3,880.

Both Hitachi and NEC have adopted variants of the technology in which the liquid crystal moves parallel to the substrate, rather than perpendicularly to it.

Hitachi focused on the viewing angle, developing a 13.3-inch XGA LCD with a 140ý angle both horizontally and vertically. A larger, 15- to 17-inch panel is planned for next year.

Power consumption is critical, because Japanese companies believe LCD monitors will be purchased for large corporate installations.

"The CRT market is huge--about 6 million units a month this year. If only 5 percent are replaced with LCD monitors, a new market, comparable to that for notebook PCs, will emerge," said Kiyoshige Kinugawa, a senior manager at Hitachi.

Lockheed Martin, Chips, team on 3-D graphics accelerator

By Ron Wilson

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Lockheed Martin last week tipped details of its 3-D development efforts, when it disclosed a joint-development partnership with Chips and Technologies Inc.

Under the agreement, the pair will integrate Chips' 2-D graphics-accelerator technology with Lockheed Martin's 3-D engine to produce single-chip graphics accelerators. Intel Corp.'s forthcoming 3-D graphics chip is believed to be one of the results of the collaboration, though neither company would comment on any relationship with Intel.

Gerry Stanley, president of Real 3D, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary, explained that the project was to implement the Lockheed 3-D algorithm in a single-chip format, in combination with the 2-D accelerator from Chips.

"We already have a 3-D chip for the PCI bus, the R3100, that is scheduled for sampling in June," Stanley said. "This project involves making some adjustments to that circuitry to support the Accelerated Graphics Port and integrating the hardware wi th the 2-D."

Motorola taps neural tech for robust speech recognition

By R. Colin Johnson

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Motorola's Lexicus Division last week announced what it's calling a "microbrain" for accurate speech recognition. The 13.5-kbyte recognizer for DSPs picks out command words, even amid loud background noise, for control of mobile devices. The tiny device runs on Motorola's existing DSP 56166, as well as on the recently announced low-cost 56800 version.

Neural-based speech recognizers learn to pick out words from background noise after training on thousands of examples. By building up a micro-version of the experience that enables brains' understanding of speech amid noise, an embedded neural network can achieve high accuracy without high-memory requirements. Lexicus has filed for patents on its speech-recognition technology, declining to describe it in detail until th e patents are granted.

Lexicus's DSP speech-recognition software achieves 99.8 percent accuracy (two incorrect words per thousand) in quiet environments, an accuracy typical of multi-megabyte high-end software recognizers. In noisy environments, 96 percent accuracy (four incorrect words per hundred) is achieved, even when the radio is on, the windows are rolled down, and the kids are screaming in the backseat.

Free Subscription to EE Times First Name Last Name Company Name Title Email address   Click here for your Free Subscription to EETimes Europe