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

Thursday, September 5, 1996

Cisco mines for Granite

'Navigation warfare' weighs GPS security

Stac forms encryption/compression group

Fujitsu will exit SRAM and EPROM businesses

Local-exchange carriers challenging telco's, cable MSOs

Wednesday, September 4, 1996

Detailer makes 3-D model-texturing easy

Chip-test method eliminates probes

Quantum wells 'tuned' by diffusion

SOI ramps for consumer, DRAM arenas

Analog-like DSOs priced in analog's range

TI samples ThunderSwitch

Burr-Brown spins c hips targeting HDSL modems

Tuesday, September 3, 1996

Microsoft bids to eclipse Sun on Net

Handheld organizer for Java brewing

Intellectual property alliance to pave path to systems-on-chips

Cable vendors look to shoot down digital satellite TV

Shipping delays hint at rift between DVD vendors

Digital cameras take shot at consumers

Monday, September 2, 1996

Labor Day

Thursday, September 5, 1996

Cisco mines for Granite

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Cisco Systems Inc., which had been expected to enter the Gigabit Ethernet market before NetWorld+Interop in two weeks, surprised even jaded analysts by offering $220 million to acquire Granite Systems Inc. (Palo Alto, Calif.), a st artup formed by Sun Microsystems Inc. cofounder Andreas Bechtolsheim.

Cisco paid over $300 million a year ago to acquire Fast Ethernet specialist Grand Junction Networks Inc. But the Granite Systems purchase is surprising because Granite is still several months away from shipping a product.

"Everyone realizes Cisco's lost a little bit of rationality in its shop-till-you-drop binge," said one LAN analyst, who mentioned the company's recent purchase of Nashoba Networks and its record-breaking, $4 billion acquisition of StrataCom Inc. "But at least with a Grand Junction or a StrataCom, you're paying for some level of tested market acceptance.

Jayshree Ullal, vice president of marketing at Cisco's workgroup business unit, said her company is investing in the knowledge and talents of Granite's executives and staff; she said Granite has been developing an ASIC suite that not only implements effective full-duplex Gigabit Ethernet switching but also "is of more general use in mul tilayer switching applications, particularly Layer 3 switching."

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'Navigation warfare' weighs GPS security

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Air Force is studying how to protect the widely used Global Positioning System (GPS) so that enemy forces won't be able to use its extreme accuracy against American troops in the event of a war.

A navigation warfare study launched in August will define new technologies and techniques with an eye toward developing a system-level architecture that would help protect GPS signals in war time. The goal is to find countermeasures to prevent such things as an enemy using highly accurate GPS navigation signals to target munitions or direct troop movements.

The study will also look for ways to reduce the impact of service disruptions on the growing number of civilian GPS users. When developed, the Air Force said the navigation warfare architecture may include new technologies and tactics affecting GPS satellites, electronic warfare systems, ground command and control systems, receivers and antennas. GPS will also be integrated into next-generation smart weapons.

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Stac forms encryption/compression group

SAN DIEGO -- Stac Inc. has spun out its OEM semiconductor and software business into a subsidiary called Hi/fn Inc., headed by former Weitek Corp. president Art Collmeyer. In addition to assuming primary responsibility for OEM compression products originally marketed by Stac, Hi/fn will take the lead in the development and marketing of products for routers and WAN access systems that combine compression with data encryption.

The spinout of its semiconductor business unit -- also referred to as its technology business unit -- leaves Stac in the business of develop ing shrink-wrapped software for emerging markets such as network backup. While Stac continues to receive royalty payments from Microsoft for embedded OS use of compression software, the patents for Lempel-Ziv-class compression will transfer to Hi/fn. Thus, all future licensing of compression, including for embedded operating system use, will go through Hi/fn.

There are a number of applications that hold the promise of turning Hi/fn into a large company. Hi/fn will try to promote a common application programming interface for handling compression and encryption simultaneously in a network. Should it catch on, use of Hi/Fn equipment could become standard in routers, remote access servers, ISDN terminal adapters, and firewall software. Already, Hi/fn is supplying such products to Cisco Systems Inc., U.S. Robotics Inc., and other vendors.

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Fujitsu will exit SRAM and EPROM businesses

IWATE, Japan -- Fujitsu Ltd.'s planned phaseout of SRAM, EPROM and mask-ROM manufacture will coincide with the closing of an older, 5-inch-wafer line at its memory-production complex here. The company announced that it will halt production of the memory devices by March to concentrate its memory-manufacturing efforts on DRAM and flash.

A spokeswoman said that Fujitsu manufactures only about 500,000 SRAMs per month now and that the company's EPROM-and mask-ROM-production numbers have shriveled. With the price of a 4-Mbit cache SRAM now at $2 or less, the value of Fujitsu's SRAM production has declined sharply.

However, as the second largest computer maker worldwide, Fujitsu has a substantial internal need for SRAMs, particularly the high-performance cache SRAMs needed for its supercomputers, servers and mainframes. The spokeswoman said that outside vendors already supply most of those needs and that they will step in to fill the void left by the internal line shutdow ns.

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Local -exchange carriers challenging telco's, cable MSOs

Worldcom (Jackson, Miss.) took the latter route, courting MFS in part because of its ownership of Uunet Technologies Inc. The telecom OEMs that will come to NetWorld+Interop here next week are responding to such moves with hardware aimed at CLECs and CLEC/ISP hybrids.

Under the new schemes, WAN-access switches are being melded into broadband frame switch es. Channel-service unit (CSU) architectures are blending digital cross-connect features into smaller, expandable chassis types. And the lines between equipment for the customer premises and the central office are becoming less distinct, making the competition among telco OEMs a virtual free-for-all.

A case in point is Ascend Communications Inc. (Alameda, Calif.), a company once defined primarily by its ISDN architectures. Ascend, which already counts MFS/Uunet among its customer base, will bring out a high-end architecture that it calls TNT ("the next thing") above its current MAX switch line.

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Wednesday, September 4, 1996

Detailer makes 3-D model-texturing easy

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. -- Engineers grappling with the new 3-D technologies using tools meant for 2-D design environments may get some help from Fractal Design Corp. 's Detailer software package. With versions for both Macintosh and Windows, the program can paint textures on 3-D objects in real-time -- a task that historically could only be done on high-cost 3-D workstations.

Rather than sit around and wait for the "render engine" to map textures onto 3-D objects, Detailer offers PC users the same sort of natural painting tools for 3-D as are offered by its popular 2-D tool, Painter. Detailer also maps natural texture maps onto 3-D objects in real-time. Engineers can create simple objects from scratch or import 32 separate 3-D objects from popular modeling packages, then map textures and add relief, shininess, roughness, transparency and highlights to objects. Ray Dream Designer, 3-D Studio and 3DMF objects may be imported, and finished scenes can be exported for final rendering to Photoshop or Painter or as PICT files.

Detailer's user interface is nearly identical to Painter's but adds a tab for controlling 3-D maps. Five types of maps are supporte d, with a dialog box allowing control over how 2-D maps wrap around 3-D objects. A new, 3-D window, in addition to the 2-D window, permits users to confine their maps to only the visible portion of an object. The main reason for the 3-D window, however, is to position one part of a texture accurately in real-time, rather than wait to see the whole object textured automatically.

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Chip-test method eliminates probes

NEW YORK -- Rather than resort to external probes to measure very fast electrical pulses in the picosecond range, researchers at Columbia University, here, and at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (Yorktown Heights, N.Y.) have successfully proven that a new approach based on optical second harmonic generation may present a workable alternative. The non-invasive technique exploits the non-linear optical response of silicon and uses the sens itivity of the second harmonic response to electric fields to achieve a detection sensitivity of 100 mV per square root Hz at sub-picosecond time resolution. An experimental setup used a transmission line to verify the technique. The approach may prove advantageous for measuring bipolar transistors and certain FETs, according to researchers involved with the work.

With their higher speeds, the electrical signals of the latest silicon devices have become more difficult to measure. In the setup, an optical beam was focused onto the test device where the electrical field was measured as a function of the time delay. The beam couples with the electrical field and a second harmonic is generated in the optical pulse wherever there is a field.

"It is pretty straightforward," said Nahata. "If you see nothing or a very small amount, then there is no field. The technique allows you to map out your electrical field."

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Quantum wells 'tuned' by diffusion

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- A recent insight into the formation of gallium-arsenide quantum wells has led a group of device researchers to propose a process for "tunable" materials that could yield applications-tailored optical responses at picosecond rates.

Using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) to grow samples and then applying a new diffusion-analysis technique, researchers at Purdue University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) claim to have produced AlAs/GaAs non-stoichiometric quantum wells that yielded a high rate of intermixing during the annealing step. The enhanced intermixing can be controlled during annealing to produce materials with a spectrum of properties, opening the door to the tuning of material properties to obtain a predetermined response.

The development may result in the use of anneals to fine-tune materials so that the same process cou ld produce a variety of high-speed optical devices for such applications as dynamic holography, optical modulation, photoconduction and electro- absorption sampling.

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SOI ramps for consumer, DRAM arenas

PEABODY, Mass. -- Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology is starting to show some muscle as it moves into a variety of niche applications. While sharing many of the advantages of both gallium arsenide and silicon germanium, the SOI technology is well-positioned to move into emerging mass markets for 256-Mbit DRAMs and low-power portable systems.

But as with any emerging technology, designers are reluctant take advantage of SOI's unique properties until a compelling reason justifies a move into unfamiliar territory. Among the features fueling interest in SOI technology are an immunity to radiation problems, an ability to operate in high-temperature en vironments, and its ultralow power requirements.

"While you can get a next-generation boost from an existing design simply by putting it on an SOI wafer, the technology really won't come into its own until low-power 2.2-V systems arrive," said Andrew Wittkower, president of Soitec USA Inc. (Peabody, Mass.).

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Analog-like DSOs priced in analog's range

BEAVERTON, Ore. -- Tektronix Inc. has developed a digital oscilloscope family that it says penetrates analog pricing territory and addresses analog-scope loyalists' longstanding reservations about DSOs.

Digital scopes have long outsold the analog variety when measured by dollar volume, but DSO unit deliveries fall far short of analog shipments. Users working in the last strongholds of analog scopes -- manufacturing test and the service and educational markets -- offer some good reason s for that: On the whole, they say, analog scopes are less expensive and are easier to use, understand and interpret.

But analogs have their own set of problems: They have always had trouble showing fast, infrequent events -- obscuring details at slow sweep speeds and presenting dim displays at high sweep speeds. And analog users must often put up with flicker, writing-speed problems at wide bandwidths, and uncooperative, slow traces.

The appearance of the TDS 200 is decidedly non-digital: Familiar-looking front-panel controls for vertical scaling, sweep, trigger level, cursors and trace positioning are scaled and laid out in the classic analog-scope manner. Users, according to Tek, will find the knobs to be responsive and linear.

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TI samples ThunderSwitch

DALLAS -- The single-chip 10/100 Ethernet frame-switching device Texas Instruments Inc. pr omised last March has moved to general sampling, and complementary ICs for quad-channel physical-layer support and address-lookup functions are soon to follow. The triple-header ThunderSwitch offering has the potential to make 10/100 LAN switches as cheap for OEMs to manufacture as shared-media repeaters, said Kurt Eckles, ThunderSwitch marketing manager at TI, here.

The core architecture for the ThunderSwitch family, unveiled in the spring, is based on system concepts provided by Bay Networks Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

With 350,000 gates (excluding memory) and an aggregate bandwidth of 3.2 Gbits/second, the TNETX3150 single-chip switch is a significant beast. It integrates an unprecedented 15 medium-access-control devices -- 12 of which are solely 10 Base T, and the other three combo 10/100 MACs.

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Burr-Brown spins chips targeting HDSL modems

The AFE1104, Burr-Brown's first product in xDSL markets, is optimized for PairGain-compatible modems. It will be followed by the AFE1103, for Brooktree/Orckit DSP devices, and the AFE1104, for Metalink devices.

HDSL, the first of the DSL technologies to be deployed, is a bidirectional modulation for twisted-pair copper that allows ordinary telco plants to carry T1 (1.5-Mbit/second) traffic in the local loop. Whereas ADSL is traditionally offered as a home service, HDSL is often implemented by carriers to lessen the cost of T1 service deployment. However, the new Internet-access interest has created a home-modem market for HDSL that rivals ADSL's.

C.R. Teeple, strategic marketing manager for HDSL at Burr-Brown, said that the trend made the market seem wo rthy of standard-product implementation, stemming from the custom project at PairGain. That company already has incorporated the chip in an OEM module that it sells with its Sparow chip on board.

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Tuesday, September 3, 1996

Microsoft bids to eclipse Sun on Net

REDMOND, Wash. -- In a cyberspace standards grab with broad technical implications for both intranets and the Internet, Microsoft Corp. has launched an apparent bid to unseat the decades-old File Transfer Protocol standard and replace it with its homegrown Common Internet File System (CIFS).

The move pits the Redmond software giant squarely against Sun Microsystems Inc., which supports the Unix world's Network File System (NFS) and its own newly developed extension, called WebNFS.

The winner of the dogfight could become the standards-setter for the underlying architecture of t he intranet, which some analysts estimate will be an $8 billion market in less than two years. According to industry observers, Microsoft is initially aiming CIFS at intranet applications. If it catches on there, then Microsoft is expected to train the protocol squarely at the Internet, challenging head on such standards as FTP and HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), the protocol used on the World Wide Web.

The opening salvo was fired last week by Microsoft, as it hosted some 40 companies for the first technical conference on the Common Internet File System. CIFS builds on Microsoft's specification for remote file sharing over intranets and the Internet, the Server Message Block protocol, currently the native file-sharing protocol on PCs that run Windows 3.x, 95 and NT.

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Handheld organizer for Java brewing

OTTAWA -- Corel Corp. last week disc losed plans to further boost its support of Sun Microsystems' Java by unveiling a plan to sell a handheld device that will use Java applets to provide organizer and Internet functions.

The software company, which has taken a lead in developing applications in Java, says it could have a Java PDA on the market as early as March.

Corel will finalize its plans for a PDA-class device in the next few weeks, said Eid Eid, Corel's vice president of software. The as-yet unnamed device would deliver organizer functions when not on the network and would be Web browsing when connected via an internal 28.8-kbps wired modem.

The company has sketched out plans for a device with a 320 x 240 resolution liquid-crystal display. It is currently considering one of three controllers: a Motorola MPC 821, an ARM chip from Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. or an UltraSparc processor. The software environment would consist of a Java virtual machine and related applets for the organizer and Internet functions.

" The idea is for a simple device that can share data with your desktop and keep you connected to the Web when you are on the road," said Eid. The company will not build any wireless communications into the device, he added.

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Intellectual property alliance to pave path to systems-on-chips

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- In the broadest approach yet to easing system-on-a-chip design through intellectual property (IP), some 25 companies will announce the Virtual Socket Interface (VSI) alliance here today (Tuesday). Though the event is organized by Cadence Design Systems, VSI includes a broad range of EDA, silicon and intellectual-property providers, as well as systems companies.

While full details of VSI's mission are not yet available, the group is expected to foster standards that will let users combine intellectual property from multi ple sources onto one chip. Possible future activities include the standardization of data formats, test methodologies and bus interfaces for synthesizable, net-list-level and physical-design cores.

A comprehensive list of participants was not available last week, but those described as having been involved for the longest period are Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Advanced RISC Machines Ltd., Sony and MIPS. Also taking part are EDA vendors like Synopsys, Viewlogic and Compass; silicon providers such as VLSI Technology and Cirrus Logic; and synthesizable-core providers, including Virtual Chips, Sand Microelectronics and Acclaim Technology.

Gary Smith, an analyst at Dataquest Inc., described VSI as one of the most important standards efforts under way: "If you really want to do system-level integration today, the only way is to go to about one of four semiconductor guys, and they each have their way of doing it. This [alliance] will open up the whole macro world."

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Cable vendors look to shoot down digital satellite TV

PHILADELPHIA -- Digital satellite TV will have its first serious competitor next month, when Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), General Instrument Corp. and a host of other cable providers launch the first digital cable-TV service.

The service will be based on General Instrument Corp.'s DCT-1000 digital set-top box and TCI's delayed Head-in-the-Sky (Hits) backbone, which together will deliver 80 channels to cable viewers in Hartford, Conn., beginning in mid-October. Along with near video-on-demand, enhanced pay-per-view and on-screen programming guides, the MPEG-2-based system integrates Web browsing and the bare-bones, high-speed Internet-access services increasingly being targeted by the cable industry. The interactive offerings are intended to distinguish the cable system's services from satellite fare.

General Instrument's Communications unit (Hatboro, Pa.), which has spent the past year recruiting cable programmers to the user ranks for its converter box, gathered applications developers here last week to discuss a series of features being integrated into the DCT-1000. So far, TCI (Denver) and such other major cable operators as Comcast, Cox and Jones have committed to buying more than 3 million digital boxes from General Instrument, with nearly 2 million under contract. The boxes are in production now at a facility in Taiwan, GI officials said.

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Shipping delays hint at rift between DVD vendors

HANNOVER, Germany -- The protracted dispute over DVD digital-videodisk copy protection was being blamed here last week for the derailing of two pivotal players' planned Fall product rollouts. Sony Corp. and Philips Electronics separately announced at the i naugural CeBIT Home show that they will put off their DVD launches until March, citing the lack of a cohesive manufacturing specification incorporating a copy-protection scheme acceptable to all parties.

Yet in a move that signaled a widening rift within the DVD manufacturing consortium, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. launched its line of DVD players, saying it can't wait for the consumer- and computer-product segments to hammer out a mutually acceptable copy-encryption scheme with the U.S. film industry. Product was promised by early November for the Japanese market and a few weeks later in the United States.

Hitachi Ltd., Pioneer Electric and Toshiba Corp. similarly announced product and preliminary pricing plans for DVD equipment, promising to put players on the shelves by Christmas.

At a press conference here last week, Sakon Nagasaki, director of Matsushita's DVD-business planning office, called completion of the DVD version 1.0 specification and resolution of the encryption de bate two separate issues. Encryption "is a problem in the United States, not in Japan," Nagasaki said.

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Digital cameras take shot at consumers

TOKYO -- Digital cameras resembling the size and operation of the no-fuss compact cameras that sell by the millions will hit Japan's consumer market this fall.

Olympus disclosed here last week a series of consumer-use cameras under the name "Camedia." The most expensive model -- the C-800L, priced at about $1,300 for the Japan market -- has a one-third-inch charge-coupled device (CCD) that delivers 810,000 pixels in interlaced mode. Competing digital cameras to date have CCDs that deliver 560,000 or fewer pixels, using progressive recording of the image.

The new CCD -- which Olympus sources from an unnamed CCD vendor -- can deliver an XGA (1,024- by 768-pixel) image to a computer or printer.

The more-expensive models from Olympus include a 1.8-inch LCD on the back for viewing the image after it has been recorded.

In addition, Sony will put digital cameras on the Japan market in October, including the "Cyber-shot" model priced at about $800 for the Japan market. The Sony consumer model features an infrared data (IrDA) port that can transfer digital images to a personal computer equipped with an IrDA receptor. A spokesman acknowledged that few IrDA-equipped computers are available now, but said that Sony will offer IrDA adapter kits for existing computers and later will put an IrDA-equipped computer on the market.

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