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

Friday, June 14, 1996

E-Data moves to enforce patent covering Internet commerce

Oak gets behind Intel audio spec

InVision has 'sound' ideas for PC audio

VDOnet teams to create multicast Net service

Dynamic outlook for disk drives in 1996

Transition to 300mm wafers stalls

Thursday, June 13, 1996

Ascend eyes Internet boost from NetStar

Internet spurs Ross to create Sparc module for PCs

Chromatic's Mpact lures Taiwan firms

U.K.'s Systolic invades U.S.

Wednesday, June 12, 1996

Sun brews up new Java APIs

Online neural net classifies spectral data

Genetic algorithms aid EM design

' Baby bust' erodes EE-grad ranks

Tuesday, June 11, 1996

VeriBest expands line with VHDL, analog, and PCB tools

From DAC: New EDA tools are needed, and soon

Web developer specializes in EDA sites

Olin, MicroModule ally on metal BGAs

GaAs replacing silicon in high-frequency rectifiers

Irvine shows 64-Mbit flash-memory 3-D stack

Monday, June 10, 1996

Microsoft sets 3-D PC-graphics spec

Synopsys and Mentor prep PC-based tools

Pay-per-use EDA tools coming to the Web

Digital preps Alpha for multimedia applications

Kodak-led group sets digital-image format

Standards spat keeps the "smart" house on the drawing board

Headlines and summaries from the pages of Electronic Engineering Times . Previous editions from 1994 , 1995 , and 1996 are in the News Archive on the News page .

Other news sources on Techweb .

Friday, June 14, 1996

E-Data moves to enforce patent covering Internet commerce

SECAUCUS, N.J. -- A company holding a patent that appears to have far-reaching implications for electronic commerce is suing some companies it believes to be infringing that patent and offering amnesty to others. The patent seems to apply to nearly any purchase on any network in which a product is downloaded, or a digitized product is accessed with a decryption code downloaded to the purchaser after payment.

E-Data Corp., a small company here that sells cakes, flowers, and other items over the Internet, earlier this month mailed nearly 75,000 copies of a package to companies that might be infringing the patent, offering them amnesty if they agree to license the technology. The amnesty offer is good through Aug. 31.

The materials, including the full text of U.S. Patent No. 4,528,643, "A system for reproducing information in material objects at a point-of-sale location," are posted on E-Data 's Web site. Products covered by the patent may include "software, fonts, images, music, video, news stories, sheet music, and other information," according to the patent. A point- of-sale location could be a home PC.

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Oak gets behind Intel audio spec

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Oak Technology this week signed on as an early supporter of the Intel-backed AC '97 PC-audio-architecture specification, disclosing plans for a programmable-DSP-based digital-audio accelerator that it says will be fully compliant with the newly minted spec. Oak intends to launch the OTI-611 in the fall.

AC '97 was announced earlier this month by Intel Corp. and four other PC-audio-chip and -board vendors. It calls for the use of two chips -- one largely analog and the other digital -- to minimize mixed-signal noise and allow the use of more highly integrated digital controllers to expedite next-generation audio applications.

Oak's OTI-611, featuring an integrated PCI-bus-master interface, addresses the digital-controller portion of AC '97. The company i s also working on the OTI-612 dual audio/communication codec, which will complement the 611 and will meet or exceed AC '97, according to Oak. The codec is expected to be launched in time for 1997 system implementation.

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InVision has 'sound' ideas for PC audio

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Looking to turn the next-generation PC into a truly interactive music maker, InVision Interactive Inc., a sound-sample company based here, is unveiling a software-based audio architecture for a desktop personal-computer platform.

Dubbed CyberSound, it can concurrently generate and mix multiple MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) streams, wavetable synthesis and direct- sound format data in real-time on a PC without a conventional sound card or audio chip. A leading PC system vendor, not identified by name, will soon announce the adoption of CyberSound in its P C, InVision officials hinted.

OEMs who have ported InVision's CyberSound technology go beyond traditional musical-instrument companies. They include videogame platform companies such as Sega for its 32-bit Saturn platform, and PC audio-chip vendors like ESS Technology, Nvidia and Integrated Circuit Systems Inc. The most recent additions to the growing list include Oak Technology as well as Philips Semiconductors for its TriMedia TM-1 processor.

In the latest move, InVision is pushing CyberSound several steps further by proposing a complete software audio architecture for PC OEMs.

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VDOnet teams to create multicast Net service

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- VDOnet Inc. has tapped resources from Cisco Systems Inc., NBC's Desktop Video division and PBS to create a special center to test Internet Protocol (IP) multicast services.

The VDOCast Center , based here at VDOnet's headquarters, will be followed by a second center in New York. If the concept proves popular with content providers, VDOnet may spin off the creation of multicast switching/routing centers as a separate operation from its IP multicast and videophone software businesses.

VDOnet president Asaf Mohr said his company had been pushed both by internetworking OEMs and content providers to create a center where the company's live-broadcast IP multicast video techniques could be tested. VDOnet uses Internet Engineering Task Force standards such as IP Multicast, Real-Time Protocol and Resource Reservation Protocol, combining the prioritization and multicasting standards with proprietary scalable video compression, thus allowing clients to access multicast sessions with analog modems, basic-rate ISDN lines, 10-Mbit Ethernet connections or other physical-layer speeds.

Multicast services on the Internet are nothing new. Precept Software Inc. has demonstrated LAN-based applications over Microsoft Windows, Apple Computer Inc. has performed similar demos for the Macintosh, and several companies have worked with the Multicast Backbone, or Mbone, service on the Internet. Mohr said the difference in what his company wishes to accomplish is the marriage of lower-bandwidth client links with VDOnet's proprietary scaling compression algorithms.

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Dynamic outlook for disk drives in 1996

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Issuing an Olympian prediction for disk drives in 1996, Disk/Trend Inc. this week forecast a stronger market, faster accessing speeds and higher capacities. In a departure from the norm, it also sees 5.25-inch drives as a hot growth segment. In its report, market-research firm Disk/Trend also made these observations:

• Though the number of vendors continues to shrink, competition remains fierce. That's particularly evident on the capacity side, where 1- to 2-Gbyte drives have replaced 500-Mbyte to 1-Gbyte drives as the capacity leader. Next year, the 2- to 3- Gbyte segment will represent the largest portion of shipments. That's quite a shift from 1994, when the 300- to 500-Mbyte class dominated.
• As capacity soars, the cost per Mbyte is shrinking. In the 1- to 2-Gbyte realm, an Mbyte cost 21 cents in 1995 but dropped to 14 cents this year. The price is expected to hit 11 cents in 1998. Pricing declines will be faster in higher capacities. Drives with 3 to 5 Gbytes will cost 14 cents/ Mbyte this year, dropping to 6 cents next year, then dipping to 4 cents in 1998.
• Overall, 109 million drives should ship this year, up 21 percent from 1995. Next year, shipments will climb 17.4 percent to 128 billion. By 1999, unit shipments will climb to 170 million.

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Transition to 300mm wafers stalls

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- There may be no insurmountable technical obstacles on the road to 300-mm (12-inch) wafer production, but economics could derail plans to have early production systems up and running by the end of the decade. That's the message expected next week when members of Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International's (SEMI's) "300-mm division team" brief member companies on the progress of the transition from 200-mm (8-inch) wafer diameters to 300 mm.

"There are a couple of issues we're still grappling with," said Ron Horwath, the team's special-programs director. "First-pass [estimates] used to be '97-98 time frame, but that was a long way from production volumes. I think people are still holding to a 1999-2000 production time frame."

The issues are economic. While IC vendors and their equipment suppliers agreed two years ago that 12 inches would be the most cost-effective next-generation wafer size, they were less cl ear on how to get there. In the intervening years, equipment and materials vendors have begun programs to bring 12-inch wafers to market, but they appear to have stalled at the alpha-test stage.

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Thursday, June 13, 1996

Ascend eyes Internet boost from NetStar

ALAMEDA, Calif. -- The recent merger announcement of Ascend Communications Inc. and NetStar Inc. (Eden Prairie, Minn.) may prove a shrewd move in the battle for the Internet backbone.

The move would give Ascend a solid technology designed specifically for huge Internet Protocol (IP) networks, a critical weapon missing from the arsenal of industry leader Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.). At the same time, NetStar's $300 million would be a relative bargain, given the rise in valuations of networking companies since Cisco announced plans to acquire Stratacom Inc. (San Jose, Cal if.) in a $4 billion deal.

Ascend's "IP switch" -- the hybrid product it plans to create with NetStar -- is an attempt to dislodge Cisco's stranglehold on the router market. Where Cisco was compelled to build for multiple networking protocols, NetStar has stuck to IP switching. The result is that NetStar's GigaRouter can provide 2.5 million packets per second, several times more capacity than conventional routers can handle.

Fortunately for NetStar, networks worldwide are gravitating toward IP-compatible protocols for networks -- including Internet-access networks and so-called Intranets.

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Internet spurs Ross to create Sparc module for PCs

CHICAGO -- Ross Technology Inc., the Sparc-processor vendor, has rolled out a module that plugs into a personal computer's disk-drive slot, letting the PC serve as both a Sun workstation and a PC. With its Sparcplug module, Ross is broadening its focus to produce CPU boards, copying a model successfully used by Intel. The Internet is driving the thrust, which Ross (Austin, Texas) unveiled this month at Comdex/Spring. The company believes that while several other vendors have tried to blend Sparc workstations and PCs but met with little market success, the Internet's popularity makes the technology more viable. "The difference is that now Internet provides you with some real reasons for running the two together," said Matt Gutierrez, marketing vice president at Ross. "Some of the best tools for Internet and Intranet are on the Solaris operating system, and some are on Windows and NT. There are de facto standards out there on both operating systems, and this approach lets you make use of both worlds."

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Chromatic's Mpact lures Taiwan firms

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Chromatic Research Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) was a center of attention at the Computex Computer show here this week for Taiwan OEMs looking to differentiate their PC offerings with high-integration multimedia silicon. Major Taiwan motherboard manufacturers Acer Inc. and First International Computer Inc. (FIC), and a plethora of add-on- card manufacturers expressed interest in the technology of Chromatic, whose single-chip hardware/software multimedia solution will soon be ready for market.

Manufacturing and marketing rights to Chromatic's 240-pin, 1.5-million-transistor Mpact chip have been licensed to LG Semicon Co. Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. by Chromatic, which will then sell its multimedia software to PC system and add-on card manufacturers for about $25. Chromatic's single-chip Mpact multimedia solution can offer a range of features, including 2-D and 3-D graphics, CD-quality audio, fax/modem ability, MPEG-1 and -2 playback, MPEG-1 encoding, and videoconferenc ing capabilities. Chromatic's software accomplishes each of the different multimedia functions with the hardware chip performing as a dedicated multimedia very long instruction word (VLIW) processor.

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U.K.'s Systolic invades U.S.

LONDON -- Systolic Technology Ltd., one of a growing band of European companies that develops and sells circuits in the form of intellectual property (IP), will enter the U.S. arena with a sales and marketing operation. Part of the value it will bring is proprietary compiler technology, akin to behavioral synthesis, which allows fast generation of microcoded DSP engines from assembly language.

The company plans to have a U.S. office within the next month or two, under the name Object Oriented Hardware Inc. It will draw down cores, technology and support from Systolic and in the future possibly from other IP companies.

Speaking at a U.K. conference, Tirumal Parvataneni, one of Systolic's two co-chief executives, said, "Object-oriented VHDL can do as much for the hardware industry as object-oriented design has done for the software industry.&quo

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Wednesday, June 12, 1996

Sun brews up new Java APIs

SAN FRANCISCO -- Sun Microsystems Inc.'s JavaSoft subsidiary revealed plans at the recent Java developers conference here to spur a myriad of application program interface (API) specifications. The aim is to push the programming language in many directions and position it to handle functions ranging from three-dimensional graphics to credit-card security.

The Java Enterprise API, for example, will allow the database access that corporate users have been requesting of JavaSoft. "There are many classes of applications people hadn't even been thin king of that should be written in Java," JavaSoft executive Jon Kannegaard said.

Among the more intriguing APIs is the Java Servlet, which lets a user upload an executable program to the network. It's similar to the remote-agent concept touted by Apple Computer Inc. or General Magic Inc., where a client could launch a program to search the network or other clients for information, and respond automatically or give periodic updates.

JavaSoft has planned a set of core APIs for Java, as well as optional standard APIs. The company also is encouraging developers to come up with their own APIs. Intel Corp., for example, is working with Sun and third-party developers to develop Java APIs that will run on X86 microprocessors.

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Online neural net classifies spectral data

ý ATHENS, Ga. -- The University of Georgia is using a neural network to automate the recognition of spectral data from complex chemical formulas. Any researchers with unidentified compounds can submit their spectral data to the university's neural network over the World Wide Web for online pattern recognition and classification. The service is free.

Called the Carbohydrate Neural Network (CarbNet), the neural-based online pattern recognizer was created by the University of Georgia Complex Carbohydrate Research Center (CCRC).

Researchers Faramarz Valafar and Homayoun Valafar at CCRC programmed the neural network to compare user spectral data with the spectra stored in its online databases.ýUsers first dial up CarbNet and submit their raw spectral data using file-transfer protocol. Then a switch to the Web enables them to direct the neural-based search engine. Alternatively, users may cut-and-paste their data directly into the Web page. Only a few parameters need to be set by the user: the recognition threshold, number of hits, instrument type, method of analysis, and data format. The neural network then searches the database and returns a hit list of compounds, each with a score between 0 and 1; the higher the score, the closer the match.

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Genetic algorithms aid EM design

URBANA, Ill. -- Researchers are applying genetic algorithms to electromagnetic-system design here at the University of Illinois Center for Computational Electromagnetics. With computational electromagnetic theory as a base, the work focuses on developing genetic algorithms for design optimization.

"It is very difficult even now, using very fast computers and efficient algorithms, to analyze even the most simple electromagnetic devices," said Eric Michielssen, associate director of the center, which was established here recently with Air Force funding. "Obviously, if you have trou ble analyzing the most simple devices, it becomes difficult for you to optimize a system.&quo

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' Baby bust' erodes EE-grad ranks

However, the magazine goes on to say that the classes of '97 and '98 will represent "the bottom of the 'baby bust.' "

Indeed, first-year engineering enrollment picked up in the fall of 1995. "This rise has been anticipated for a number of years," Engineers states, "and probably . . . represents a more general long-term growth trend in overall college enrollments."

The reason for the increase is demographics: A decade-long slide in the birt h rate started reversing in the mid '70s and increased until 1991. Consequently, the number of high-school graduates is on the rise until at least 2010, according to Engineers. But we still have to get over the hump of the next two years before that newly expanded high-school base starts showing up in the job pool.

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Tuesday, June 11, 1996

VeriBest expands line with VHDL, analog, and PCB tools

BOULDER, Colo. -- In a major expansion of its Windows NT-based VeriBest product line, VeriBest Inc. -- recently spun off from Intergraph Corp. -- has announced VHDL simulation, analog simulation and pc-board signal-analysis tools. The new offerings, part of VeriBest release 14.5, complement existing HDL synthesis, Verilog simulation and layout tools. The new VeriBest VHDL simulator was internally developed by VeriBest, but it uses an IEEE 1076-93 co mpliant VHDL analyzer from Leda (Grenoble, France).

It's a logical addition to the product line, given that VeriBest already offers VHDL synthesis, graphical design entry and HDL editing.

"What's really unique about this product is its subkernels," said Dan Ganousis, VeriBest vice president of marketing. Instead of one kernel, he said, VeriBest VHDL has a series of subkernels that can accelerate such things as Vital primitives, file I/O, standard logic package IEEE 1164, and the Synopsys synthesis subset.

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From DAC : New EDA tools are needed, and soon

LAS VEGAS -- Cycle-based simulation, formal verification, and emulation will become essential parts of the verification landscape, according to a panel at the recent Design Automation Conference here. EDA users, vendors and academics all agreed that a number of approaches is needed to cope with next-generation systems.

Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley, said "Efficient verification tools are not enough. We have to have a verification-aware design methodology."

Sangiovanni-Vincentelli outlined three crucial aspects of a good verification methodology. They include "formalization" through a precise and unambiguous model; support for varying levels of abstraction with the proper mathematical techniques; and "decomposition" of circuits into loosely connected components, so that users can separate, for example, function from interface.

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Web developer specializes in EDA sites

NEW YORK -- For EDA companies looking to post unique Web pages that are indicative of their technologies -- and not just glitzy marketing brochures outsourced to commercial Web-production firms -- help is on the way from Full Circle Connections Inc. (Los Altos, Calif).

The startup develops EDA and IC industry-specific Internet services and proprietary technology that will "enable related vendors to incorporate Internet technologies as an integral part of their products," said Ed Lee, marketing director for the company.

Full Circle draws on its pool of EE experience, most of which comes from founder Sean Murphy, who worked as product manager for network design tools at Cisco Systems, in CAD/CAE management at 3Com and at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). "It was at Cisco that I first recognized the profound impact that Internet technologies were going to have on the electronic design process," Murphy said. Full Circle's expertise has yielded the updating and technical accuracy techniques applied by the EE Web site staple E2W3 .

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Olin , MicroModule ally on metal BGAs

MANTECA, Calif. -- Olin Interconnect Technologies and MicroModule Systems Inc. (MMS) have firmed up a joint agreement that will see MMS put thin-film metal traces on Olin's metal ball-grid-array (MBGA) package. The deal comes as acceptance of the ball-grid array is increasing and could help move the package closer to the mainstream, as Olin pushes to move its MBGA into volume production.

Olin's MBGA mimics the technique of a metal quad flat pack by using a metal BGA substrate instead of laminate to improve the heat dissipation and provide a ground plane for the package. Olin has been working with MicroModule (Cupertino, Calif.), for some time, and the companies recently formalized their working arrangement.

"MicroModule Systems' role is as a thin-film metal supplier," said Michael Holmes, business manager at Olin (Manteca, Calif.). We build the substrate here; it's an anodized aluminum substrate. On top of that, traces are built with thin-film metals, which is what MMS will build."

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GaAs replacing silicon in high-frequency rectifiers

MAUI, Hawaii -- While silicon has served the rectification market for decades, gallium arsenide (GaAs) rectifiers are just coming on the scene at declining price points that make the technology attractive as a silicon alternative in certain high-frequency applications. In a paper delivered at the recent International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs (ISPSD '96) here, Motorola Inc. identified GaAs rectification as an enabling technology for high-frequency operation of power MOS-gated transistors.

Samuel Anderson, manager of new products at Motorola's Signal Products Division (Phoenix), identified three applicat ions that can benefit from GaAs rectification: 600-V rectifiers for power-factor correction (PFC), low-voltage synchronous rectification, and medium-voltage output rectification in power supplies.

According to Anderson, the benefits of GaAs rectification in those applications include the elimination of losses directly attributed to recovery, a reduction in commutation losses, minimal noise and higher di/dt. Those features become even more attractive as the operating frequency goes above 100 kHz, Anderson said, since reverse-recovery current, noise transients, and abrupt recovery at moderate di/dt create stress on power switches at those frequencies.

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Irvine shows 64-Mbit flash-memory 3-D stack

Irvine is also readying a 256-Mbit flash module, based on four of the 64-Mbit stacks, that it says will fit in a hermetically sealed 102-pin flat pack measuring 0.18 x 1.32 x 1.46 inches. The module is built on a high-temperature cofired ceramic substrate.

The flash devices are designed for use in applications requiring ultrahigh-density, non-volatile memory, such as multichip modules (MCM), high-density memory cards, advanced avionics and archival storage. Emerging markets known to be interested in using flash memory include image storage for digital cameras, hard-drive replacements for ruggedized field systems, and solid-state digital navigational charts for avionics.

"We expect the 256-Mbit module to attract considerable interest from the avionics and missile markets" because of its density, said Jack Arnold, director of memory products for Irvine's Advanced Technology Operation.

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Monday, June 10, 1996

Microsoft sets 3-D PC-graphics spec

REDMOND, Wash. -- Microsoft Corp. is readying a reference design for 3-D personal-computer graphics that is said to eliminate both frame buffers and conventional graphics accelerators. An announcement on the "Talisman" project -- which involves silicon from Cirrus Logic, Fujitsu Microelectronics and Samsung Semiconductor -- is expected in August at Siggraph in New Orleans, said sources close to the effort.

Talisman is based on the concept of 3-D objects. Specifically, physical objects to be displayed on the screen are represented as software objects in main memory. Those objects are preprocessed into polygons and sorted -- based on their distance from the viewport -- by software. Then, a highly intelligent chi p called a compositor picks up the polygons on the fly, texture-maps them and streams the pixels in real-time to a special RAMDAC.

Talisman totally changes the flow of data through a 3-D pipeline. In a conventional approach, geometry calculations would create a polygon list in main memory. Those polygons would be broken into spans of pixels. A 3-D chip would read the pixel spans, calculate which pixels from each span would be visible, calculate lighting and save these intermediate results. The intermediate data would then be used by the chip to read texture maps from a dedicated texture memory and write modified texture data into a screen buffer. The RAMDAC would pull completed pixels from the screen buffer.

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Synopsys and Mentor prep PC-based tools

LAS VEGAS -- Marking a turning point for the EDA industry, Synopsys Inc. announced its first PC -based product at last week's Design Automation Conference here.

And in a separate move that likewise underscores the growing importance of Windows-based software for EDA, Mentor Graphics Corp. (Wilsonville, Ore.) introduced its first PC-based pc-board CAD program, Integra Station, through the acquisition of Seto Software GmbH (Starnberg, Germany) under undisclosed terms. Mentor also announced expanded PC-based capabilities in design entry and HDL simulation.

Synopsys (Mountain View, Calif.) is the last of the major EDA vendors to back a PC-based platform. Its FPGA Express VHDL and Verilog synthesis tool, designed for ease of use, is aimed at the "second wave" of designers now moving up to HDLs.

With the Synopsys announcement, rapid growth in Windows-based EDA seems assured. "This is a breakthrough," said analyst Gary Smith at Dataquest Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) "The whole CAE world was hanging fire until Synopsys made its move. Now everybody has to support NT."

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Pay -per-use EDA tools coming to the Web

A group of graduate students led by professor Richard Newton of the University of California at Berkeley demonstrated a collection of EDA software tools, including Synopsys Inc.'s Design Compiler, that could be used to design ICs over the World Wide Web.

The tool set is currently limited to realizing finite state machines (FSMs), and the research at this point remains an academic exercise. But the principle is clear: With tools running on powerful hosts -- perhaps at vendor sites -- and with adequate bandwidth, the World Wide Web could transform design by ushering in an era of pay-per-use EDA tools accessed over the Internet.

"My vision is that five or seven years from now, somebody in Japan with a Netscape browser could use Synopsys's tools or Viewlogic's tools, university research and [format] translation servers on the Web. The challenge is to make the whole thing work."

Visit the Berkeley team's home page at http://www.cad.eecs.berkeley.edu/ .

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Digital preps Alpha for multimedia applications

MAYNARD, Mass. -- Digital Semiconductor is quietly preparing enhancements to the Alpha instruction set, readying the microprocessor for an assault on commercial multimedia. Three new categories of instructions aimed at improving motion-estimation algorithms will be added to future Alpha processors, and will put a full range of multimedia features -- including desktop videoconferencing, MPEG-2 vid eo playback and video authoring -- in Alpha's range without the need for separate dedicated circuitry, the company said.

The new instructions are more limited in scope than the MMX instruction set recently described by Intel Corp. for the P55C CPU, but their specificity is intentional, according to Tim Counihan, product manager for Digital Semiconductor (Hudson, Mass.), a division of Digital Equipment Corp.

While, in general, Digital adheres to Intel's MMX approach of "adding more execution units to a superscalar design [to] let you perform signal-processing operations at floating-point precision," Counihan said motion estimation is an exception.

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Kodak -led group sets digital-image format

CHICAGO -- A group of corporations led by Eastman Kodak Co. teamed up last week to create a file format for digital photos, saying the techniqu e will ease the shift to digital photography while speeding and simplifying digital-image transfer over the Internet and other networks.

In addition, several other companies joined Kodak partners Hewlett-Packard Co., Live Picture Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in expressing varying degrees of support for the specification, called FlashPix. It was rolled out at Comdex/Spring here. Among them are Apple Computer, Canon, Corel, IBM and Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd., one of Kodak's key competitors in the conventional silver-halide film market. Fuji said in a written statement it is "pleased to support the FlashPix initiative to support an open industry image format, and to continue to examine its applicability in our future products."

The heavy show of force comes in the wake of a spate of digital-camera product introductions, many of them designed to trim prices in hopes of jump-starting the market. Camera makers, most of them Japanese, are also improving links to PCs in hopes of driving the shift f rom silver-halide film to digital imaging.

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Standards spat keeps the "smart" house on the drawing board

The temperature outside was a sizzling 97ý, and tempers inside the Consumer Electronics Show Habitech '96 home-automation-systems conference ran just as hot. Promoters of the three technologies vying for status as the control standard for smart-home systems -- X-10, CEBus and LonWorks -- traded barbs in a war of words that has stymied the resolution of interoperability issues among the proposals.

"We've been hearing this crap for so long, it just makes you sick," said guest speaker Mark Tipton, president of home-control-system company Smart House L.P. Tipton voiced the frustration of the dozens of corporations that have been working hard to ignite consumer interest in home-automation systems.

The technology is still too costly. At last count, only 22,000 interoperable systems controllers had been installed in U.S homes, certainly not sufficient numbers to get an industry moving. And with an estimated average price of $500,000 for homes designed to be "smart" out of the box, who but the moneyed can afford one?

Furthermore, the three potential standards are incompatible not only with each other but also with the myriad productsalready wired inside the home.

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