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  Headlines and summaries from the pages of Electronic Engineering Times. Previous editions are available from the 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1997 News Archives.
 Friday March 7, 1997Sensors jockey for role as successors to CCDsCMOS and charge-modulation device (CMD) sensors are emerging as the likeliest candidates to replace the power-hungry charge-coupled device (CCD) in next-generation portable equipment.
Closed spectrum auction setRegulators have agreed to auction two slots beginning April 1 for a U.S. satellite digital audio radio service (DARS). A neighboring swath of wireless spectrum will be put on the block two weeks later.
Leaner TI lays ambitious plan to 'touch every bit'One month after divesting itself of both its defense systems business and its portable-computer operation, Texas Instruments is vowing to place even greater emphasis on semiconductors -- especially its lucrative DSP business.
Hong Kong shift clouds China-Taiwan PC tradeWill Hong Kong's pending handover jeopardize Taiwan's $2 billion business in PC-related production in mainland China?
Startup covers Gbit EthernetIn the debate among Gigabit Ethernet startups over whether to offer simple Layer 2 bridges or complex switch-routers, newcomer Foundry Networks Inc. will play both sides of the street -- and them some.
Thursday March 6, 1997Here comes the $100,000 engineerThere was a time when engineers had to be a top-level manager to earn anything near a $100,000 salary. No longer. Earnings for a hotshot designer in Silicon Valley can soar above $120,000 with bonuses. Now you're talking an entree into the much-coveted doctors-and-lawyers salary strata, long envied by the engineering profession.
Memory designs embrace the exoticIn an attempt to sustain the rapidly increasing density of DRAM technology, the latest research is moving into more exotic materials systems, such as silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and ferroelectric capacitor designs. Logic design is also slated for a makeover, with forward-looking multilevel logic allowing more information to be stored on a single DRAM capacitor.
Robotic sensor simplifies precise positioningA non-contact optical sensor could increase the flexibility of computer-controlled machines. By creatively using mirrors and lenses, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories have devised a new six-degree-of-freedom (sixDOF) sensor that extracts information from a single laser beam.
Vendors plot moves for 56-kbit modemsRecent announcements of modem alliances for software-based modulation algorithms have unleashed a flurry of related introductions. PCtel, an originator of Host Signal Processing for Pentium and MMX, has launched a codec/ASIC single-chip modem, called 56K Ready. Meanwhile, Motorola has prepared its own initial software implementation of a PCM modem design.
Component stack lifts PCsA modular, stackable component system proposed by inventor Randy McNurlin addresses the increasingly frequent need to upgrade computer systems as technology advances.
Wednesday March 5, 1997Philips rolls out TrimediaPhilips will start shipping its TM-1000 Trimedia processor in volume next week as the first versions in 0.35-micron CMOS become available. The architecture, based on superscalar very long instruction words, also received a boost as it is currently the only media processor Microsoft is recommending for its Talisman 3D graphics initiative.
PADS upgrades schematic entryPADS Software Inc. has launched PADS-PowerLogic, a new schematic-entry program. Unlike the previous PADS-Logic program, the new entry is a true Windows application, thus providing the same look and feel as the company's PADS-PowerPCB product.
Big vendors look toward optical inspection of boardsHewlett-Packard and Teradyne have developed new optical-inspection systems, demonstrating the growing importance of optical inspection as a way of testing complex circuit boards.
VSATs capture satellite dataVery small aperture terminal (VSAT) receivers use satellite transmissions to download digital data. Stanford Telecom's STEL-9258 VSAT receiver board is one of the first to provide a completely variable data rate.
Atlas system features Motorola processorAtlas Computer Equipment has followed up its 68360-based communication card line with the Darwin System, a development system for serial communications based on the Motorola MPC850 PowerQuicc processor.
Tuesday March 4, 1997Workstation wars heat up between NT, UnixIf Compaq and Intergraph have anything to say about it, 1997 could be a depressing year for the traditional Unix workstation. Both companies will take their respective new families of high-end Wintel platforms and make major runs directly at the CAD and EDA strongholds long dominated by RISC workstations from Sun, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Digital Equipment and Silicon Graphics.
Magneto-optic technique stores 20 Gbytes on a diskTeraStor Corp. has set out to alter the storage industry with a new recording technique. The startup is prepping a magneto-optic technology that it says will have far higher capacity than magnetic disk drives and lower costs than tape drives.
Exotic technologies fuel auto-engineers confabDespite the lack of any whiz-bang technologies in recent years, electronic engineers are continuing to think up novel products, some of which were seen at the annual Society of Automotive Engineers conference and exposition here last week.
3Com ups ante in internetworking, buys U.S. Robotics3Com Corp. beefed up an already-strong hand in remote-access public-network technology last week by acquiring U.S. Robotics Inc., in an agreement worth more than $6.5 billion. The deal moves 3Com within striking distance of Cisco Systems Inc., the world's largest internetworking company.
Monday March 3, 1997Proprietary network could crack public InternetA technical white paper released here suggests that WebTV Networks, whose hardware is actively promoted to consumers as a gateway to the public Internet, may be laying the groundwork to "fracture" the Internet by spinning off its own non-IP-based network. The network would feature content from major consumer Internet-site developers and would display over any TV screen, but the data would be accessible only from WebTV servers.
Intel, Microsoft, PCMCIA lead plug-ins effortTwo industry groups with different agendas are taking aim at a common specification for a universal peripheral bay that will work for both desktop and notebook computers. But the PCMCIA and the ad hoc Device Bay group acknowledge that getting there will not be easy, and may even require crafting a whole new variant of the 1394 interface.
Telecom Act leaves telcos disconnectedJust a year after President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 amid great fanfare, industry players and legislators question whether the law is succeeding in opening the U.S. telecommunications market to competition. Reviews are decidedly downbeat.
Toshiba preps merged DRAM-logic processToshiba Corp. expects to have a merged DRAM-logic process ready for use at a 0.25-micron fab line by October, the company said last week. The company will spend about $850 million on a line now under construction at Oita on Kyushu.
Standard looks to reshape computing clustersA group of vendors has launched a draft specification to define a standard that would encompass all future computing clusters--an effort aimed at propelling PC servers deeper into the territory of traditional minicomputer and mainframe-class systems.
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