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, July 19, 1996

Intel, Microsoft get behind Internet phone

ARM's Piccolo plays to DSP-core market

Japanese PDA vendors scramble to add PHS features

SGS-Thomson's processors may speed-up Java applets

Microsoft straddles Java/ActiveX fence

Comments to FCC show split over HDTV spec

Thursday, July 18, 1996

Analysts see no let-up on battering of electronics stocks

Berg to buy Ericsson's connector unit

Mitsubishi bids for system-on-a-chip market

Motorola unifies comm-IC marketing in new focus

Protocol mid dleware becomes a viable business

Startup puts spin on reverse engineering

Wednesday, July 17, 1996

Lucent unwraps mixed-signal USB macrocells

'Free-D' graphics chip emphasizes video

Disney's Hillis: A career without parallel

Design simplicity promotes an IR boom

'Dramatica' links neuron dynamics to mind

Tuesday, July 16, 1996

Europe working on 1.2GB, 1.8-inch card drive

Fingerprint ID cards present a touchy situation

SVR offers verification

Epic targets sub-0.35-micron design

Ganymede network tester lets results be posted to the Web

MCNC spins off flip-chip technology startup

Monday, July 15, 1996

AT&T-led alliance to push wireless Internet access

Politics could cancel HDTV before debut

Trilateral IC trade pact in works, joining U.S., Japan, Europe

IC production equipment makers expect hard times

Avant! brief reveals defense strategy

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, July 19, 1996

Intel , Mic rosoft get behind Internet phone

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. are endorsing the H.323 audio/video/data-conferencing standard for IP networks as a baseline platform for PC-based Internet telephony. The move could edge the Internet phone, until now a niche of technology startups with proprietary solutions, into the market mainstream.

In announcing a technology-exchange agreement for standards-based, interoperable Internet-communications products, Intel and Microsoft said the Intel Internet Phone applet and the Microsoft NetMeeting full-featured telephony-application software will interoperate not only with one another but also with other H.323-based communications software.

For the moment, the partners will focus on audio and data communications. But Rick Yeomans, marketing manager of Intel's Personal Conferencing Division, said the addition of video is only a matter of time, since H.323 uses the same audio/video codecs developed for H.324-standard conferencing over POTS-switched networks. Yeomans said that Intel will look to implement the video codec on a PC when "MMX becomes available."

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ARM's Piccolo plays to DSP-core market

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. (ARM) plans to introduce a range of DSP coprocessor cores under the name Piccolo to complement its 32-bit RISC cores.

An official announcement of ARM's Piccolo technology is scheduled for October, but the company wants to put a stake in the ground following an announcement by Hitachi regarding integration of its SH RISC with additional DSP resources and a similar announcement from Motorola. Some of ARM's semiconductor licensees are already implementing Piccolo solutions for their customers, the company said, and the first Piccolo-enabled chips should appear in 1997.

ARM claim two major benefi ts of Piccolo: optimization of the DSP resources to ARM's ALU, and a unified development environment that covers both the RISC controller and DSP cores.

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Japanese PDA vendors scramble to add PHS features

TOKYO -- With Japan's Personal Handyphone System (PHS) becoming a hit with consumers, manufacturers are looking to meld PHS's data-transmission capabilities into a new class of personal digital assistant (PDA) that would be able to support mobile e-mail and Web browsing.

The prospects for a PHS-based mobile data-communications terminal -- an industrial Holy Grail that, for the most part, has eluded manufacturers worldwide -- has set off an intense product-development race.

"Business users are attracted to the idea of combining a telephone with a PDA or personal computer, and PHS has an advantage because it can offer the widest 32-kbits/ second data channel," said Kenshi Tazaki, telecommunication analyst at Dataquest Japan.

If a PHS can deliver 32 kbits/s as planned, it will have a leg up on Japan's digital-cellular operators, who can support data transmission of up to 11.2 kbits/s. The 90-company PHS Internet Access Forum, formed in April, has standardized the layer-2 protocol for 32-kbit/s data digital transmission and is working to standardize the physical form of the connectors.

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SGS-Thomson's processors may speed-up Java applets

BRISTOL, England -- SGS-Thomson Microelectronics (STM) is pursuing the possibility of accelerating the Java language on both its 486 and ST20 RISC processors. The 486 is intended to let STM address the market for network computers, while the ST20 would target embedded applications such as set-top boxes, mobile phones, smart phones and person al digital assistants -- areas where Java may become significant.

According to an STM spokesperson, a design team in Phoenix -- the company's major site for the manufacture of X86 processors -- is working with a number of customers on an ASIC cell that will be an accelerator for the Java virtual processor on the X86. The cell is expected to be available in the second quarter of 1997.

In essence, the coprocessor looks for those operations in Java that require a lot of CPU cycles, and seeks to accelerate those.

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Microsoft straddles Java/ActiveX fence

Redmond, Wash. -- Microsoft Corp. displayed an element of schizophrenia with its Web-tools strategy, when the company unveiled the beta version of its new Java development environment, but spent most of a day-long Internet seminar singing the praises of its competing, homegrown ActiveX technol ogy.

Meanwhile, Javasoft will fire its own salvo next week, when it debuts its Java Developer's Connection. Accessible through the company's Web site at java.sun.com, the developer's connection will feature online technical support and live chat sessions with Java luminaries like James Gosling.

These and numerous other Java announcements cluttering the Web in recent weeks highlight the confusion in Web development. Indeed, so many new tools and environments are being released that developers are often at their wit's end just to stay current with all the information; the popular Usenet comp.lang.java newsgroup is rife with messages seeking information on upcoming products.

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Comments to FCC show split over HDTV spec

WASHINGTON -- Comments filed this month to the Federal Communications Commission have been divided into two camps: those favorin g a quick government mandate of the proposed HDTV Grand Alliance standard and opponents, who want the various industries with a stake in digital TV to work out their own market-driven standard.

Those backing an FCC mandate include the Grand Alliance, the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), broadcasters and Clinton administration technology officials. Opponents include the U.S. computer and cable industries as well as cinematographers.

The HDTV Grand Alliance and ATSC received an unexpected boost from two Clinton administration officials. "Failure to adopt a U.S. standard may mean that competing systems [such as the European Digital Video Broadcasting system] will win the race for worldwide acceptance," said Larry Irving, assistant Commerce secretary for communications and information.

However, Irving urged the FCC to develop a "clearly defined plan" to ensure that the competing industries migrate to all-progressive scanning, including a target date for full tran sition.

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Thursday, July 18, 1996

Analysts see no let-up on battering of electronics stocks

NEW YORK -- After the disappointing quarterly earnings reported or forecast by some semiconductor, chip-equipment, systems and EDA companies earlier this month, Wall Street analysts expect few surprises from those companies yet to report.

Analysts polled by EE Times this week on their earnings estimates for major players in the silicon, systems and EDA sectors expect DRAM makers to take the biggest hits. A case in point is Texas Instruments Inc. (Dallas), which reported this week that sharp price declines for DRAMs and lower semiconductor-royalty revenue reduced profits to $96 million from $403 million a year ago. Record revenue from DSPs and ASICs and an increase in TI's personal-productivity-product sales for the quarter could not prevent the company's earnings from falling to 39 cents a share from $1.44 the year before.

Excluding the fortunes of DRAM makers, however, analysts expect chip companies' revenues to be down only slightly from the year-ago quarter. And they expect better sales figures by the end of the year, pointing to the June semiconductor book-to-bill ratio (0.91, compared withýa revised 0.83 for May) as an indicator of improving health.

They also point to Intel Corp. as a bellwether stock for the industry. Analysts' expectations that Intel would post an increase in sales for the second quarter were fulfilled when the company reported record quarterly revenue of $4.62 billion, up from $3.89 billion a year ago. Intel exceeded Wall Street's expectations by earning $1.04 billion, or $1.17 per share compared with the year-ago $879 million, or 99 cents a share.

Programmable-logic makers also have seen inventory corrections but are expected to bounce back by year's end.

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Berg to buy Ericsson's connector unit

ST. LOUIS -- Berg Electronics Inc. is negotiating to acquire the connector business of Ericsson Telecom AB in a bid to heighten its presence in the European telecommunications market.

The definitive agreement is expected to be finalized during the fourth quarter, said Berg marketing vice president Chuck Shrader. Under the pact, Berg Electronics would be a preferred supplier of connector products for the telecom and switching equipment that Ericsson (Katrineholm, Sweden) produces for the global market.

According to Berg, Ericsson's connector unit annually produces more than $40 million in connectors, which are mainly used in Ericsson's telecom programs.

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Mitsubishi bids for system-on-a-chip market

SU NNYVALE, Calif. -- Mitsubishi Electric Corp. has spun a portion of its resources into a new quasi-ASIC company, VSIS Inc., that will handle leading-edge system-on-a-chip designs, the company will announce Monday.

VSIS is backed by an unspecified amount of venture capital from Mitsubishi Electric (Tokyo) but will ultimately be an independent operation, said Yasutaka Horiba, VSIS president and the former general manager of Mitsubishi's System LSI Laboratory.

VSIS will leverage Mitsubishi's R&D and fabrication facilities, as well as intellectual property from both inside and outside the company, to combine silicon and software in next-generation ICs for the industrial-control, multimedia and other markets, said vice president Stephen Hester. "We needed to have a separate focal point to get into this market," he said. "Being entrepreneurial can be difficult in a company that's as big as Mitsubishi. We want [to have] the best of the big and the best of the little company, and merge the two."

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Motorola unifies comm-IC marketing in new focus

AUSTIN, Texas -- Motorola Inc.'s Semiconductor Products Sector has brought several wireless-and wireline-communications groups under a unified vertical-market-access umbrella called Access Motorola.

The restructuring of 12 groups under the new logo pulls together such diverse efforts as asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), Optobus parallel optical links and asymmetric-digital-subscriber-line (ADSL) transceivers. It also brings in elements of the Microprocessor and Memory Technologies Group that are aimed primarily at communication applications.

Devices earmarked for marketing through Access Motorola include data-communications controllers for high-speed LANs, microcontrollers such as the 68360 and PowerQuicc 860, and static RAMs and CAMs for data communications. "It's far easier for the customer if we link products according to end applications, instead of by underlying technologies," said Phillip Grove, director of market development in wired communications.

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Protocol middleware becomes a viable business

DEDHAM, Mass. -- Protocol software stacks for LAN-WAN internetworks have become so complex that a legitimate business is emerging for companies that concentrate on providing middleware to OEMs. Harris & Jeffries Inc., located in Dedham, Mass., and Los Angeles-based Trillium Digital Systems Inc. are becoming the most widely recognized names in this business, though they are following very different business models to link up with OEM and semiconductor partners.

Dispelling any doubts that standalone protocol middleware is undoubtedly a business in its own right, H&J this week sold its hardware business for an undisclo sed sum to EMC Corp. H&J chief executive David Jeffries said that the source-code licensing business is booming in so many different directions, the company wants to put all efforts into communication protocols. As for EMC (Hopkinton, Mass.), the enterprise-networking company also recently acquired McData Corp. in order to focus on communication protocol software.

Trillium concentrates on keeping a timely edge over competitors by offering point-solution modules for ATM signaling, Broadband intercarrier interfaces, and other emerging specs from the ATM Forum and International Telecommunications Union.

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Startup puts spin on reverse engineering

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Patent-search specialists in the era of Lexus and the Web are becoming as commonplace as corporate headhunters. But reverse-engineering teams, by contrast, carry an aura of covert-ac tion specialists, not unlike hacker "tiger teams."

Now a small company operating as a virtual network of consultants in Colorado's front range is trying to combine the two disciplines into something its president calls "forensic technology investigations." Taeus Inc., an acronym for Take Apart Everything Under the Sun, is an aptly titled organization that performs reverse engineering of hardware and disassembly of source code, then combines its reports with searches of patent portfolios. Although it shies away from direct legal advice, the engineering staff of Taeus will even serve as expert witnesses at legal proceedings.

Taeus president Arthur Nutter is a veteran of such semiconductor companies as Inmos and Inova Microelectronics. Some of the concepts of combining reverse engineering and patent searches were developed by Nutter when he managed DRAM analyses for Mosaid Inc.

Nutter said, "We don't just let companies know what their competitors' patent portfolios mig ht cover. We also identify patentable technologies they might have developed themselves, and in some cases we let groups within a company know what is included in their own companies' portfolios."

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Wednesday, July 17, 1996

Lucent unwraps mixed-signal USB macrocells

BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. -- Lucent Technologies' Microelectronics Group has jumped on the universal-serial-bus bandwagon and announced the first in a family of mixed-signal USB interface cells for its 0.35-micron ASIC family.

The USB is "in," as of the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference this year. Microsoft Corp. has blessed it as the appropriate way to connect low-bandwidth peripherals -- meaning everything from mice to audio speakers and laser printers -- to the next big PC. Intel Corp. has anointed USB as worthy of inclusion in its next generation of core -logic chips, due this summer. And pundits have offered it at least the faint praise of inevitability.

That leaves peripherals OEMs in a slightly uncomfortable position. It would be ungrateful, if not actually dangerous, to say unkind things about the USB. But there are a few nagging details.

USB, like most new serial I/O schemes, requires non-TTL drivers. It has a non-trivial protocol that can't be handled in software on an already-occupied microcontroller. In short, it requires interface silicon. And that silicon is neither readily available nor -- and this is the key point -- nearly free.

So OEMs have to find a way to get the USB interface into their products without incurring substantial added costs. One possibility is to include a USB interface in an existing I/O ASIC in the product, should the product happen to have an I/O ASIC. To that end, mixed-signal ASIC power Lucent (nee AT&T Microelectronics, if you've misplaced your scorecard) has introduced its USB interface cells. Like the co mpany's PCI cells, this product comes from Lucent's association with Sand Microelectronics.

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'Free-D' graphics chip emphasizes video

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Oak Technology is taking the so-called "free-D" route to PC-based 3-D graphics via a 64-bit graphics controller that allows a PC's host CPU to handle both 3-D geometry and pixel rendering.

The OTI-64217 Eon chip enables 2-D, 3-D and video acceleration on a PC. Its three-pronged aim is "providing much better video, making no sacrifice of 2-D performance and offering 3-D acceleration at very little extra cost," said Oak product manager Tony Rodrigues.

Compared with other 3-D graphics chips that have surfaced in the past year, Oak's new chip puts a greater emphasis on responding to mainstream graphics- and video-application needs, as opposed to providing heavy-duty 3-D gr aphics for videogame and entertainment-equipment users. Eon features a new drawing-engine architecture, called GrafixPump, and tightly coupled support for high-bandwidth, fast memory, including the 83-MHz extended-data-out (EDO) DRAM, 100-MHz synchronous graphics RAM (SGRAM) and synchronous DRAM (SDRAM). The chip also provides improved video scaling and integrates RAMDAC functions with built-in alpha blending and gamma correction.

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Disney's Hillis: A career without parallel

Danny Hillis is a long way from his roots in Burbank, Calif., as a designer of powerful supercomputers used by the defense industry to design nuclear weapons. Bombs are the last things he wants now that he's become the first member of the Fellows Program at Walt Disney Co., helping the firm blend entertainment and electronics.

Hillis made his mark in the supercomputing industry when he diverged from the pathway of Seymour Cray and others, devising techniques that made it possible to link hundreds of small processors together to surpass the speeds of proprietary supercomputers. Hillis, who will turn 40 this fall, helped found Thinking Machines, but it folded when the collapse of the Berlin Wall helped bury the supercomputing industry.

Now that he is vice president of R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering, Hillis is using technology to provide better amusement for all aspects of Disney's empire. For him, the move to entertainment is an invigorating shift from designing computers. "There are definitely differences between this industry and technical companies," Hillis said. "One interesting thing is that in designing computers, you have an intense creative period at the beginning when you do the invention. Then the work begins, and 90 percent of what you do is working with legacy decisions that were done earlier."

"In entertainment, you're always in a creative phase. You never have to worry about creating Lion King 1.1 or worry that The Hunchback of Notre Dame is backward-compatible with anything. You can always be in your most creative phase.

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Design simplicity promotes an IR boom

While many engineers perceive infrared technology to be "low tech" relative to advanced electromagnetic systems, IR's cost advantages and broadly acceptable performance levels are promoting such diverse applications as modems that enable wireless e-mail, smart car bumpers that detect nearby objects for collision avoidance, video cameras that transmit wireless images in real-time and headphones that offer moviegoers multilingual audio translations. The technology's potential has analysts predicting a $1.3 billion market by 1999, representing a 66.5 percent compound annual growth rate.

One reason for the acceler ating pace of IR design-ins is the simplicity and reliability of mainstream IR LED technology, most commonly used in point-to-point communications links. "LEDs are more reliable than lightbulbs," said John Day, president of market-research consultancy Strategies Unlimited (Mountain View, Calif.). "They respond faster and have longer lifetimes than incandescent bulbs."

In addition, OEMs need not be concerned with electromagnetic interference (EMI) -- a common problem with radio-frequency (RF) communications, especially in highly sensitive medical products. Neither must IR products meet the stringent Federal Communications Commission restrictions that have been placed on RF products.

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'Dramatica ' links neuron dynamics to mind

BURBANK, Calif. -- While much has been learned about human psychology and, more recently, about the basic neural circuitry of the brain, no one yet has hit on a scheme that links the two. However, a new software package designed to help authors construct storylines may contain a clue to the missing hierarchy of the brain.

The authors have devised a basic story unit, called a "quad," that appears to have much wider applicability to psychology and neurobiology. "We aren't academic scientists and our model is not meant to necessarily represent the actual physiology of the brain, but we think it could be used as a model of the dynamic functions present in the brain as well as the psychological functions of the mind," said Melanie Phillips, who along with colleague Chris Huntley wrote the software.

Phillips and Huntley spent a good part of the last 15 years developing quad theory and finding applications for it in both psychology and, at a higher level, in understanding human interaction as portrayed in stories and dramatic works. Quad theory establishes relationships across a wide spectrum of dynamic systems, from neuron behavior to human behavior, finding the same invariants at each level. At a given dimensional level, an entire quad fits into a quadrant at the next higher level. That property is called codependence since all four parts of the old quad act together to form the quadrant in the new quad. Likewise, any quadrant can descend to the microscopic by being further subdivided into a new quad -- called independence since the new quad is created by the independent action of one quadrant from the old quad. "Even the mind can be explained by a quad relating to its underlying neurobiology," said Phillips.

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Tuesday, July 16, 1996

Europe working on 1.2GB, 1.8-inch card drive

GLENROTHES, Scotland -- A collaborative project put together under the Esprit research program of the European Union is working on inductive- head technology and aims to develop a prototype 1.2-Gbyte capacity, 1.8-inch-format PC-card disk drive within the next year. In addition, the same project is to deliver a prototype 4-Gbyte, 3.5-inch-format removable-cartridge disk drive.

Europe has only two indigenous disk-drive development companies: Calluna Technologies Ltd., based here, and Myrica UK Ltd. (Dunfermline, Scotland). Both companies are part of the project, which is titled "Strategic Components, Technologies and Systems in Magnetic Storage," but goes by the imprecise but apt acronym of "Scotsman." The project is worth about $5 million, with half of the funding provided by the European Commission and half by the partners.

Scotsman began on Feb. 1 of this year and is scheduled to run for 18 months. Other members include Nomai S.A. (Avranches, France), which is the parent company of Myrica; Silmag S.A. (Grenoble, France); and Xyratex Ltd (Havant, England). It is a collaboration of all the leading magnet ic-storage companies in Europe, together with systems companies Fast Multimedia GmbH (Munich, Germany) and Acorn Computer Group (Cambridge, England).

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Fingerprint ID cards present a touchy situation

MELBOURNE, Fla. -- When Harris Corp. decided to forge into the trendy field of biometric-identification sensing with an IC that recognizes a person's fingerprint, the company faced an interesting dilemma. The sensor chip had to come into contact with the user's finger, but dust and liquid couldn't be allowed to touch the aluminum pads or wire bonds. Through its military work, Harris had developed silicon devices that lent themselves to the task of examining the hills and valleys on a person's finger in order to quickly determine whether a person attempting to enter a secure area or buy a product using a credit card has been approved by a central databas e.

To prevent damage to the interconnections, Harris puts what it calls a window frame around the edge of the chip. The frame is attached to the top of the IC just inside the wire-bonding area. That leaves the center of the chip open for users to put their finger on the device. But the adhesive and frame create a barrier that keeps contaminants out.

"What we do is put a water-soluble material in the cavity, then put the package in a transfer-mold press like they use everywhere," Matt Salatino, manager of advanced packaging technology at Harris, said.

One potential drawback to the technique is that it can't currently be used in such applications as automatic teller machines, for which there is a higher chance of vandalism than in personal computers or in locations where an attendant is present. "We're looking at ways around that. In the meantime, there are more than enough applications that don't have that problem," Salatino said.

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SVR offers verification

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Silicon Valley Research (SVR) has announced availability and pricing for Clover, a set of verification tools acquired from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs Design Automation in a $5 million deal last month. SVR thus brings to market a tool set that will directly compete with verification offerings from Avant!, Cadence and Mentor Graphics. Like products such as Cadence's Vampire or Avant!'s VeriCheck, Clover provides hierarchical verification for large ICs. The modular product includes layout-vs.-schematic (LVS), design rule checking (DRC) and parasitic resistance-capacitance (RC) extraction, covering the basics of full-chip IC verification.

"We see a significant link between physical layout and verification, and we see a real positive synergy in terms of not having to go outside to other technologies," said Art Monk, SVR vice pre sident of marketing. He asserted that Clover provides "very high performance" for hierarchical designs, which are becoming more prevalent with deep-submicron technologies.

Randy Smith, SVR's vice president of product marketing, described Clover as a fully hierarchical product family that runs faster than competing tools in customer benchmarks.

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Epic targets sub-0.35-micron design

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Launching a major campaign to prepare for IC feature sizes below 0.35 micron, Epic Design Automation has announced a new service and various tool improvements to become "nanometer ready." Epic defines the "nanometer" range as anything at or below 350 nm.

Epic's new service, Direct Silicon Access, generates timing files for Epic's timing and power analysis tools directly from test chips. Version 3.4 releases of Epic 's tools offer such features as RC (resistance-capacitance) reduction, hierarchical extraction and closer links to Synopsys synthesis tools. Longer range, Epic is working on a simulation architecture that can handle such problems as cross-coupling.

Though EDA tools have undergone considerable improvements to handle feature sizes down to 0.5 micron, 0.35 micron presents another "line in the sand" at which new approaches must be developed, said Simon Napper, Epic vice president of marketing. "You can't just do more of the same," he said. "You have to introduce new algorithms."

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Ganymede network tester lets results be posted to the Web

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- Ganymede Software Inc. is shipping an updated version of its Chariot network performance testing software that allows systems to be monitored over Unix, W indows NT and Windows 3.1 and to be viewed through HTML files on Web sites. The Chariot package tests packet performance at all seven layers of the Open Systems Interconnect protocol stack.

Chariot 1.1 will be further augmented in August, when a Windows NT console for TCP/IP networks ships. Current consoles are based on OS/2, with endpoint client packages offered for Windows 3.1, 95 and NT; as well as for OS/2, HP-UX and Sun Solaris. With the new HTML support, tests can be automated and results written directly to a Web server.

An example of such test results can be viewed at the Ganymede Web site.

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MCNC spins off flip-chip technology startup

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- MCNC, the non-profit consortium based in North Carolina, has launched a company that will try to commercialize the low-cost flip- chip technology MCNC has been developing for the last eight years. Unitive Electronics Inc., the new MCNC spin-off, will be headquartered here and plans to have its own wafer-bumping fab in operation by the second quarter of 1997. Until then, Unitive Electronics will utilize MCNC's fabrication facility on a contractual basis.

Unitive will be able to support wafer bumping for 4-, 5- and 6-inch wafers at the MCNC facility, while an 8-inch (200-mm) wafer-handling capability is in the works and is expected to be completed by the third quarter.

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Monday, July 15, 1996

AT&T -led alliance to push wireless Internet access

KIRKLAND, Wash. -- Led by AT&T, a four-way communications alliance this week will launch technologies to enable wireless Web access via cellular phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). At the heart of the effort is the new Handheld Devices Markup Language (HDML), which encodes text-based Web pages to ride packet-radio networks.

The partners -- AT&T Wireless Data, Mitsubishi Wireless Communications Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Cirrus Logic subsidiary Pacific Communication Sciences Inc. (San Diego), and startup Unwired Planet Inc. (Redwood Shores, Calif.) -- are betting that Web access will be the "killer application" that propels AT&T's slow-growing cellular-digital packet-data (CDPD) wireless-data services into the mainstream.

HDML was developed over the past year by Unwired Planet , a startup formed by Alain Rossmann, a former executive at defunct PDA vendor EO Corp. According to Unwired Planet, HDML will be an open language and will be available royalty-free to third parties, with specifications published on the company's Web site.

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Politics coul d cancel HDTV before debut

WASHINGTON -- The political rift over mandating a U.S. HDTV transmission standard may be the final nail in the coffin for digital broadcasting in America unless all sides in the dispute can somehow find common ground -- a prospect that seems unlikely as the dispute becomes increasingly acrimonious.

With the passing last week of the deadline for filing comments to the Federal Communications Commission on the proposed U.S. HDTV standard, all sides in the digital-TV war await the FCC's decision while jockeying for political position. But many in the electronics industry worry that if no one shows leadership soon, HDTV could languish in the United States.

The bickering in recent weeks over whether the FCC should mandate the recommended HDTV spec is the latest in a long series of mis-steps that threaten to undo more than a decade of work on a U.S. standard. And there's plenty of blame to go around. Among the miscalcula tions that threaten to derail U.S. digital TV are the FCC's inability to direct traffic and resolve technical and policy disputes, the U.S. computer industry's scorched-earth policy toward the proposed standard, and the HDTV Grand Alliance's close hold on implementation details of technologies and on its intellectual property.

To complicate matters further, Congress unexpectedly jumped into the fray at the last minute and added political and budgetary elements to the already complex negotiations.

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Trilateral IC trade pact in works, joining U.S., Japan, Europe

TOKYO -- The stage appears to be set for some form of the MITI-proposed trilateral Global Governmental Forum, which would bring the European Union into the U.S.-Japan semiconductor trade agreement.

European tariffs on semiconductors pose a stumbling block, and "complicated logis tics" remain to be worked out, a U.S. official warned last week. Nevertheless, Washington appears amenable to a two-stage negotiation: initially, the bilateral arrangement would be extended, and then the Europeans would be brought in, with other major semiconductor-producing nations perhaps following later.

The trilateral governmental forum is likely to be complemented by the proposed "World Semiconductor Council," a private industry group that would bring the semiconductor-producing members of the European Electronics Association into a body that would play an important role in setting standards, making recommendations on taxes, protecting the environment and other industry matters.

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IC production equipment makers expect hard times

SAN FRANCISCO -- As they kick off their biggest show of the year here Monday, semiconductor-equipment v endors will find the venue haunted by shades.

A rash of delayed fab projects has choked semiconductor-equipment demand and thrown revenue growth into question. After spending more than a year well above 1.0, the equipment book-to-bill ratio dipped to 1.01 in April, according to Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI; Mountain View, Calif.). Preliminary reports put the ratio at 0.88 for May -- a sudden stop to the dreamiest two years of sales the equipment industry has ever seen.

As the IC industry's supply link, the equipment and materials business traditionally is the hardest hit when a slowdown strikes the chip sector. When their customers sneeze, it's said, the equipment and materials companies get pneumonia. Such is feared to be the case again this year. And despite the electronics industry's insistence that semiconductor and PC sales will rebound in the fall, some analysts say the equipment slump could last through 1997.

The slowdown has repercussions not only on the economic health of the equipment vendors but on their ability to tackle their biggest technical challenge in years: the transition from machines that handle 200-mm (8-inch) wafers to those that will yield 300-mm (or roughly 12-inch) wafers.

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Avant! brief reveals defense strategy

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- In a document made public last week, Avant! Corp. set forth a detailed defense strategy against claims of software theft leveled by Cadence Design Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.). The Avant! document foreshadows a protracted legal battle with academic experts lining up on the opposing sides.

Avant!'s document, filed June 28, is a response to a Cadence motion for a preliminary injunction against the sale of Avant!'s ArcCell and ArcCell-XO IC layout products. Complete with references to color-coded charts, it reveals Avant!'s intention to refute every C adence claim on an algorithm-by-algorithm basis.

However, the document acknowledges that "similarities" were found in certain files created before a 1994 settlement between Cadence and Avant! president Gerry Hsu. While Avant! maintains the settlement absolves it of legal liability, it claims to have removed all questionable code through a "clean-room" process.

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