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, August 30, 1996

Flat-panel TVs star at Europe's CeBIT

From Hot Chips: Is superscalar played out, or are CPUs?

IEEE book addresses EE career issues

Broadcom looks to put QAM in cable modems

Motorola puts MCU core, DSP on a chip

Thursday, August 29, 1996

Spyglass strategy is Microsoft-compatible

Netscape looks past PCs with Navio

Korean semiconductor market still struggling

Startup Bookham gets an investment boost

Market forecast bright for Gigabit Ethernet

Symbios pulls ARM core into its l ibrary

Wednesday, August 28, 1996

Genetic algorithms seen as design tool

Laser eliminates non-linear effects

Receiver handles DSS, DVB satellite video

'Thin clients' get MPC8xx

LAN switches go remote

Tuesday, August 27, 1996

Zenith lands $1B digital set-top order

Cadence, TSMC push public model

CCT seeks delay in Cadence suit

IEEE-USA issues challenge on jobs

$100M fund formed to help Java startups

Monday, August 26, 1996

Avant! acquires MetaSoftware

Campaign '96 puts high-tech issues on agenda -- Reader poll: Dole vs. Clinton

Java grabs spotlight at Hot Ch ips forum

Cadence, TSMC push public model

NEC samples its 64-bit RISC MPU

Friday, August 30, 1996

Flat-panel TVs star at Europe's CeBIT

HANNOVER, Germany -- Consumer-electronics manufacturers are here this week for the inaugural CeBIT Home show in search of a product with sufficient muscle to shake the listless European consumer-electronics market out of its funk. The clearest contenders for that role are digital-video-disk (DVD) equipment and large-screen flat-panel displays.

Despite the virtually universal acknowledgment of DVD as the consumer product of the decade, delayed launch dates and continued wrangling over copy-protection issues dominated the news from the DVD front. On the other hand, CeBIT saw two of Europe's leading electronics manufacturers move aggressively to pitch the ac plasma-display panel (PDP) as the strongest t echnology for wall-hanging TVs, with products promised by the second quarter.

Those companies, Philips (Eindhoven, Netherlands) and Grundig (Germany), have teamed on technology development for what would be the first consumer-use 42-inch wall-hanging TV -- though at an estimated $13,000, the set will likely appeal to only the most conspicuous consumers. The set's display is based on Fujitsu Ltd.'s ac color PDP.

Philips will supply the 42-inch-screen sets to its Philips Consumer Electronics subsidiary (Knoxville, Tenn.) for the U.S. market, also by the second quarter.

Other flat-TV technologies demonstrated included a 25-inch Sony Plasmatron, based on plasma-addressed active-matrix LCD technology, and Panasonic's in-house-developed 26-inch ac plasma displays. Sony announced at the show that its first Plasmatron will be launched in Japan this fall and in Europe by mid-1997.

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From Hot Chips: Is superscalar played out, or are CPUs?

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Among its many functions, the IEEE Computer Society's Hot Chips Symposium has become an annual update on the unending quest for more workstation Mips. Architects compare notes, run ideas up various flagpoles and, occasionally, return the fire that such displays inevitably draw.

Some presenters and attendees exhibited a growing belief that the superscalar revolution had run its course, and that it was time to look elsewhere for the next breakthrough technique.

Other voices were heard, saying that it is time to look beyond the CPU, toward the memory system for increased performance. And there were even whispers -- not necessarily welcome ones -- that the great architectural debates of the 1990s had been pointless; the only real advances in system performance had in the end come from improved processes, not better architectures.

But all of the complexity of superscalar processing and th e techniques used to accelerate it appears to be reaching diminishing returns. The average number of effective instructions per clock has not gone up that much in recent chip announcements. One paper observed that running Digital Equipment Corp.'s four-way superscalar, 300-MHz Alpha 21164 actually ran at two clocks per instruction, not four instructions per clock on an SQL application. Equally serious, the design time for new CPUs is skyrocketing.

Some voices, notably Sun's Bill Joy, in his keynote address, and University of Michigan professor Yale Pratt, in his tutorial session, began to shift attention from the CPU to compilers and underlying algorithms.

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IEEE book addresses EE career issues

PISCATAWAY, N.J. -- In a new book from IEEE Press, The New Engineer's Guide to Career Growth and Professional Issues, engineers offer their peers guidance i n addressing career and professional concerns.

Editor Irving J. Gabelman, an IEEE Fellow and former Rome Labs researcher, solicited chapters from mostly IEEE members on jobs and careers; law; government and professionalism.

For instance, Richard Backe, a chairman of IEEE-USA Employment Assistance Committee, has contributed a chapter on "The Job Market," which covers resume writing, job interviews and advice on job searches. George F. McClure, who heads up career policy issues for IEEE-USA, talks about "Pensions and Retirement Planning."

Long an active member of IEEE-USA, the professional activities arm of IEEE, Gabelman visited colleges on behalf of IEEE-USA's Student Professional Awareness Conferences, where speakers give engineering students real-life advice about their careers. But, as he writes in his book, "While SPACs are needed, a more effective method of educating engineering students would be to include a course covering pertinent subjects in the engineeri ng curriculum. A one-semester course, in which a relatively brief introduction to the various career-influencing factors is given, would be a desirable and valuable addition."

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Broadcom looks to put QAM in cable modems

IRVINE, Calif. -- Broadcom Corp. is finally reaping the benefits of several years' promotion of quadrature-amplitude-modulation (QAM) algorithms for broadband access. Its QAMlink architecture is finding its way not only into hybrid fiber/coax cable TV systems, but into telco Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) infrastructures as well.

This week, the company updated its original QAMlink chips for interactive set-top boxes by introducing a dedicated chip set for cable modems with two receiver options. Since set-top manufacturers are already using Broadcom chips for first-generation QAM systems, the company can claim to have made a virtual sweep of the cable-modem market. Design wins include Com21, General Instrument, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta.

But a more unusual footnote may prove to represent an important expansion of the QAM base. Northern Telecom (Research Triangle Park, N.C.) has elected to use the original Broadcom 31xx QAMlink chip set as the base for a future ADSL and Very-high-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line (VDSL) family of modems.

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Motorola puts MCU core, DSP on a chip

AUSTIN, Texas -- Looking to leapfrog the competition in ICs for wireless communications, Motorola Inc.'s new Communications and Advanced Consumer Technologies Group is integrating its first RISC-based microcontroller core with a DSP in one chip, EE Times has learned. The device is targeted at the merchant Global System for Mobile Communications cellular-phone mar ket and derivative applications.

Code-named Redcap, the chip packs a RISC microcontroller core called RCE, for Radio Communication Engine, along with a 56600 DSP core similar to Motorola's 24-bit, 56300 Onyx DSP architecture, launched early this year. The RCE crunches more than 40 million instructions per second and the DSP handles 50 Mips or more.

Redcap also has data RAM and ROM; program RAM and ROM; peripheral circuitry, including multiplexer, UART and timer; and a JTAG block, among other features. Chips will debut early next year.

"What's important is the concept of combining RISC microcontroller and a DSP into one chip for the communications market space and derivative markets," said Fred Shlapak, general manager of the new Motorola group, in an interview here earlier this week.

Motorola's decision to integrate RISC and DSP processors for digital-communications applications is an implementation strategy that can be very costly on battery life. A 40- or 50-Mips rating ma y not be a good number for this application, especially if it comes at the expense of battery life.

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Thursday, August 29, 1996

Spyglass strategy is Microsoft-compatible

NAPERVILLE, Ill. -- Spyglass Inc. has bolstered its move to bring Web access to embedded systems, rolling out a development kit compatible with tools from Microsoft Corp. The Server Software Development Kit (SDK) is one of the first products that's compatible with Microsoft's Internet Information Server packages.

The kit, developed as part of a joint agreement with Microsoft signed late last year, can be implemented on both NT and Unix systems. It provides a way for developers to create products that will operate now and may become mainstream technologies if Microsoft's Midas touch extends to Internet access.

"This is part of our whole support strategy," said Randy Littleson, director of product marketing at Spyglass (Naperville). "It represents both the here and now and the desire to get a product into place before people start clamoring for it."

Currently, Littleson said, "Microsoft is not a dominant player, but there is a lot of talk and interest in what it's doing in the Internet market. ActiveX has become popular, and there's a lot of interest in Microsoft's other offerings."

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Netscape looks past PCs with Navio

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Netscape Communications Corp. announced the formation of a company that will look to place Netscape's Internet software onto non-PC devices. Netscape estimates that the consumer market for such devices will hit 500 million units over the next five years.

The company, called Navio, has already formed alliances with four major Japanese con sumer-electronics companies: Sony, Nintendo, Sega Enterprises and NEC -- as well as with IBM and Oracle. The goal is to develop software to make a new blend of Netscape Navigator into smaller, modular software that can be easily integrated into the less powerful hardware of non-PC devices, such as cellular phones, televisions, cable modems, set-top boxes, video games, pagers, hand-held wireless-communications units and network computers.

Marc Andreessen, vice president of technology at Netscape, said the current domination of the PC is price-intensive for consumers and industry alike; hence the need for Navio. "The sheer effort of working with the PC is big," he said, "and the cost of ownership and maintenance for industry can run as high as $15,000 a year per system."

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Korean semiconductor market still struggling

"The aggravated financial conditions and the poor overall environment in the global semiconductor market will worsen the situation in the third quarter of this year,'' one bank analyst said.

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Startup Bookham gets an investment boost

Venture-capital firm Volandem Investeringen has signed an investment deal and will provide a representative to the board of Bookham. Volandem is sponsored by Robert Madge, though it may not be he who takes the board seat. The investment in Bookham follows a similar one by Terry Matthews, chief executive officer of Newbridge Networks (Kanata, Canada). The investment will be used to fund Bookham's expansion plans with an emphasis on volume manufacturing and quick-turnaround assembly facilities. It also beefs up Bookham's value prior to an initial public offering expected within the next two years.

Bookham's first standard products are expected to be launched in 1997. A spokesperson for Bookham said: "We have had enormous interest from potential investors. Obviously the possibility of a strategic relationship with Newbridge Networks and Madge has influenced our choice."

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Market forecast bright for Gigabit Ethernet

The report from market-researcher Dataquest Inc. said demand for high-speed wired communications will help push silicon and systems solutions for the emerging standard to such levels. Trudy Barker, a telecommunications analyst with Dataquest, said 155-Mbit ATM will play a role in wide-area networks and in some campus-backbone environments. But Gigabit Ethernet will be leveraged in environments "that are data-intensive," she said.

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Symbios pulls ARM core into its library

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Wednesday, August 28, 1996

Genetic algorithms seen as design tool

BERKELEY, Calif. -- Genetic algorithms may be the key to cracking some of the very large combinatorial problems in IC design, because they are able to search spaces that traditional methods classify as unsolvable. That's the conclusion of researchers from Germany and the United States who compared notes on using genetic algorithms in IC design during the first on-line Workshop on Soft Computing two weeks ago.

Rolf Drechsler and Henrik Esbensen at the Institute of Computer Science in Freiburg, Germany, collaborated with professor Bernd Becker at the University of California at Berkeley to survey the reported results and analyze the use of such algorithms in the computer-aided design of VLSI circuits.

The researchers concluded that since the algorithms are inherently parallel and can gain near-linear speedups by executing on MIMD (multiple instruction, multiple data) architectures, they are ideal for taking advantage of resources such as unused networked workstations at night. On single-CPU machines, parallel a rchitectures could mitigate the algorithms' inherently long run-times, due to the thousands of generations that must be created and tested to apply a survival-of-the-fittest operation.

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Laser eliminates non-linear effects

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Two simple additions to the device structure of high-powered semiconductor lasers may eliminate the beam fragmentation that has limited their power output. Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that adding a pair of epitaxial layers between the multiple-quantum-well active region and the cladding layer produces lateral-mode stability, thereby keeping filamentation in check.

High-powered laser technology historically has encountered a fundamental barrier created by non-linear effects. While non-linear behavior is negligible at low power levels, it causes such problems as beam filamentation as the po wer increases, making it increasingly difficult to focus energy on a target.

The Rochester researchers believe a key to eliminating disruptive non-linearities may be the introduction of an opposite non-linearity that cancels the effect and prevents fragmentation.

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Receiver handles DSS, DVB satellite video

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- As the TV ads take their toll, more people are signing up for direct-satellite TV receivers. That, naturally, means a booming business for satellite set-top boxes, and so there is a scramble to turn what last year was pretty obscure technology into a commodity product.

Chip vendors have the basics under control and are beginning to compete on features. The analog components are still resisting integration. But much of the rest of the receiver chain is now getting packed into a single piece of silicon by the advanced ASIC vendors.

The most recent embodiment of these ideas comes from VLSI Technology, which just announced the VES1777, the second generation of its satellite-receiver chip series. It extends the original design by adding DSS compatibility and a number of important channel-management functions.

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'Thin clients' get MPC8xx

AUSTIN, Texas -- Two weeks after providing a performance road map for desktop and server versions of the PowerPC, Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector is showing that the embedded MPC800 versions of PowerPC will hit unprecedented price points for consumer appliances and Internet "thin clients." The new MPC801 is a simple controller with dual UARTs, which will be offered in volume prices as low as $29.95.

"Our target for the 801 was a high-performance but cost-sensitive market that only needed the PowerPC with a simp le serial interface," said Mike Shoemake, MPC800 program manager in Motorola's networking and communications operation in Austin. "There may be several ATM access or Internet access applications for the 801, but in areas where support for multiple protocols is not necessary."

The potential for consumer applications is also significant, as Motorola proved by announcing Mitsubishi Consumer Electronics (Norcross, Ga.) as the first 801 customer. Mitsubishi will use the controller in the DiamondWeb Internet TV, where the 801 is used with the Motorola Scorpion graphics processor and 68HC68 bit-slice processor.

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LAN switches go remote

ATLANTA -- A primary theme of last fall's NetWorld+Interop was the use of LAN switching in enterprise backbones. This spring's N+I looked at WAN access from remote offices. It follows, then, that an OEM focus for this fall's show is the hybrid combination of LAN switching and WAN access for remote offices.

Virtually everyone has a plan to "go small," as platforms debut from 3Com Corp., Digital Equipment Corp., Cabletron Systems Inc. and UB Networks Inc. But the 3200, from Cisco Systems Inc.'s workgroup business unit, is perhaps most ambitious of the bunch.

Though it comes from the group that absorbed the LAN switching architectures from Kalpana Inc., Crescendo Communications Inc. and Grand Junction Networks Inc., the 3200 embeds a full 2503-class Cisco router in a form factor called the FlexSlot.

Product manager Felipe Ortega said the motivation for the system was simple: Remote offices with even small LANs require high-throughput desktop connections, necessitating a switched 10-Mbit port at the minimum and a switched 100-Mbit uplink in many cases. But such sites also need a WAN connection, with full IP and IPX routing.

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Tuesday, August 27, 1996

Zenith lands $1B digital set-top order

Americast's parent companies -- Ameritech Corp., BellSouth Corp., GTE Corp., SBC Communications and Disney -- will purchase the boxes from Zenith during the next five years.

By using interchangeable network-interface modules, the same box design and architecture will support four different delivery media: wireless cable, hybrid fiber-coax, fiber-to-the-curb, and direct-broadcast satellite. The box architecture is believed to be based on the Microware-designed David system running a Motorola 68XXX processor. It is also expected to use technologies developed by DiviCom Inc. Both Zenith and Americast declined to comment.

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Cadence, TSMC push public model

Tool vendor Cadence and chip foundry TSMC have integrated BSIM3 models for TSMC's process technologies with Cadence's Spectre simulator. Models for TSMC's 0.5-micron, 5-V process will be available for Spectre in September. BSIM3 version 3 models were developed at the University of California at Berkeley three years ago.

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CCT seeks delay in Cadence suit

The translator in question links CCT's IC Craftsman autorouter to Cadence's Virtuoso custom layout system. Cadence, based here, claims that CCT violated the provisions of the Cadence Connections program. CCT asked for the postponement to prepare its case against Cadence.

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Mitsubishi plans 6-inch wafer plant

Mitsubishi Material and its subsidiaries -- Mitsubishi Material Silicon Corp. (Chiba, Japan) and Mitsubishi Silicon America Corp. (Palo Alto, Calif.) -- will establish a $10 million capital company in a suburb of Jakarta, Indonesia, to run the wafer factory. Construction is scheduled to be completed in April 1998.

While 8-inch wafers are in big demand for leading-edge computer and communications components, 6-inch wafers are needed in the production of many ICs used in consumer applications, the company said last week.

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IEEE-USA issues challenge on jobs

The IEEE job listing service offers job-seekers Web, Gopher and e-mail versions of job openings that are organized and listed by region.

Snyder said he wrote the letter to respond to the severe shortage of "electrotechnologists" in the United States. He challenged high-tech executives to make use of IEEE-USA's Job Listing Service as "an inexpensive, effective way to advertise your openings to IEEE's 315,000 members."

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$100M fund formed to help Java startups

Prominent technology companies that have invested in the KPCB Java Fund include Sun, Cisco Systems Inc., IBM Corp., Netscape Communications Corp. and Oracle Corp. The communications industry is also represented with investments from U S West Media Group and TCI Technology Ventures, the venture arm of cable-TV giant Tele-Communications Inc.

The first three investments by the Java Fund will go to Active Software, Calico Technology and Marimba Inc., all based in northern California.

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Monday, August 26, 1996

Avant! acquires MetaSoftware

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Mounting an aggressive campaign for IC-design-tool supremacy, Avant! Corp. last week disclosed it has acquired MetaSoftware (Campbell, Calif.), the leading provider of Spice-based simulators for the semiconductor ma rket.

Avant!'s second deal in two weeks - last week it announced the purchase of Anagram - gives the company a sudden stronghold in circuit simulation.

Valued at about $76 million and $160 million, respectively, the Anagram and MetaSoftware deals demonstrate that Avant! is undaunted by its bitter legal struggle with Cadence Design Systems (San Jose, Calif.). Indeed, Avant! appears to be trying a strategic end-run around Cadence with both mergers, acquiring core technology that Cadence either doesn't have or has not been able to propel to market leadership.

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Campaign '96 puts high-tech issues on agenda -- Reader poll: Dole vs. Clinton

Traditionally aloof to high-stakes politics, the high-tech industry and its engineers are crowding the rails today as the presidential campaign breaks out of the gate.

However, engineers and thei r bosses are betting on different horses.

According to the federal election data released last week, the top contributors to President Bill Clinton's campaign, so far, include the telecom, electronics and entertainment industries. But an EE Times survey of nearly 900 engineers and mangers finds them favoring Republican candidate Bob Dole, by a 46 percent to 38 percent margin. Reform Party candidate Ross Perot trails with 8 percent, a considerable falloff from his run for the Rose Garden in 1992, when he collected 19 percent of the readers.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties are taking notice of the growing economic clout and influence of high technology.

In their platforms, Republicans acknowledge that "at least half of all economic growth in the United States [is due] to advances in technology." It favors "tax and regulatory policies that encourage private-sector research and experimentation," improved education in science and engineering, and slams "micromanageme nt of the information age" as "an impediment to the development of America's information superhighway."

The Democrats, meeting in Chicago, stated in their draft planks, "Investments in technology drive economic growth, generate new knowledge, create new high-wage jobs, build new industries and improve our quality of life." Like the Republicans, the Democrats take credit for the sweeping Telecommunications Reform bill. But in addition to talking about economic impact, Clinton has added that the Democrats want "technology to create jobs and improve the quality of life for American workers," a distinction that plays on Democrats' long roots in the labor movement.

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Java grabs spotlight at Hot Chips forum

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- The debate over Java's role in emerging silicon and computer architectures moved to center stage at the e ighth Hot Chips Symposium here last week.

Sun pressed for widespread use of its object-based language and argued that the most efficient execution vehicle for many Java applications would be a dedicated Java chip that directly executed the Bytecode intermediate language. But that viewpoint, which spilled over into an intense late-evening panel discussion, attracted strong opposition from a number of directions in this gathering of CPU architects.

The debate began with the keynote by Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems (Mountain View, Calif.), who argued that the need for reliable, modular software dictated new characteristics for language tools. Joy said applications would be highly modular and machine-independent, so that a set of objects could be assembled dynamically on a node for a particular task.

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Cadence, TSMC push public model

Tool vendor Cadence and chip foundry TSMC have integrated BSIM3 models for TSMC's process technologies with Cadence's Spectre simulator. Models for TSMC's 0.5-micron, 5-V process will be available for Spectre in September.

BSIM3 version 3 models were developed at the University of California at Berkeley three years ago.

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NEC samples its 64-bit RISC MPU

The VR4101 is based on a low-pow er MIPS core that NEC developed in early 1995. Built in a 0.35-micron CMOS process, the VR4101 integrates the core with a memory controller, along with controller circuitry for IrDA interface support for infrared transmission, PCMCIA, an LCD, pen-input and a keyboard. It also supports direct memory access between the CPU core and the on-chip embedded peripherals.

The part runs at 33 MHz and consumes 250 mW at 3.3 V. The 6.5 x 6.5-mm die comes in a 160-pin thin quad flat pack. NEC plans to begin volume production of 300,000 units per month in October. The sample price is $50. In volume, the device will carry a unit price of $25 apiece in quantities of 100,000.

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