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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.

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Friday March 14, 1997

Startup brings virtual reality to fabs

A small startup computer-based training company in Arizona is providing virtual-reality simulations for several major semiconductor fabrication facilities, pointing the way toward further use of VR in design engineering.

National to buy Mediamatics

In a move that takes it in the system-on-a-chip direction touted by its president and chief executive officer, Brian Halla, National Semiconductor has announced an agreement to acquire Mediamatics Inc. for approximately $100 million.

WavePhore widens Intel tie

WavePhore Inc., a specialist in codec technologies for data broadcast over TV using vertical blanking intervals (VBI), is expanding its collaborative efforts with Intel Corp. The companies plan to establish VBI-ready PC standards.

Big boys arm for coming CompactPCI battle

There isn't a single real-world application of CompactPCI yet in existence, but the coming CompactPCI market is already shaping up as a battle of manufacturing prowess.

European design, test confabs to merge

When the European Design & Test Conference (ED&TC) opens here Tuesday, visitors will be told that Europe's two leading design and test conferences and exhibitions have decided to merge their annual events.

Thursday March 13, 1997

Hardware isolates computer viruses

Calluna Technology Ltd., a developer of 1.8-inch hard-disk drives, is branching out into hardware that protects PCs against viruses. The company, based here, initially plans to sell its Virus Isolator as a PC plug-in card designed to sit between the motherboard and the hard drive.

Newbridge's Vivid group will keep UB content

UB Networks Inc.'s Geo series of hubs and switches has gotten an unexpected boost, as Newbridge Networks Inc. plans to integrate that product line within its own Vivid LAN products.

Structure aids light coupling in circuits

An experimental hybrid device that integrates a phototransistor with an optical waveguide promises to eliminate tricky optical coupling problems in optoelectronic designs.

Solid-state memory associates gigabytes of data

OmniDimensional Systems plans to create a 2-Gbyte solid-state memory by integrating thin-film transistors and diodes onto a substrate that is formed from the flexible foil used to store information optically on CD-ROM. The intent is to substitute thin-film electronics for the slow and unreliable mechanical parts used in optical drives.

Tool converts text to graphics

EDA tools that generate HDL code from graphical diagrams have become commonplace, and Summit Design is a major provider. Now the company has decided to go in the other direction, by announcing a complete register-transfer level (RTL) text-to-graphics generation capability.

Wednesday March 12, 1997

RISC chips built for specialization

Three recent microprocessor announcements illustrate how far the various threads of RISC architecture have diverged in search of markets. The three chips -- one you can buy now, one you may be able to buy later and one that will never be on the merchant market -- show deep specialization toward the embedded market, the PC market and the workstation business, respectively.

Neural-network design simulator gets upgrade

Neuro-Dimension Inc. is circulating the beta version of the upcoming revision of its NeuroSolutions simulator, which is claimed to apply the "feel" of electronic-circuit design to the design of neural-network circuits.

Driver conjures Windows NT device drivers

The tough task of writing Windows NT kernel-mode drivers could get a little easier, thanks to a new tool kit from Vireo Software Inc., a small, specialized software-tools company, based here.

Toshiba's 64-Mbit NAND flash due

Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. has announced that it is almost ready to sample the 64-Mbit version of its NAND flash-memory chip.

QuickBench upgrades modeling tool

Chronology Corp. has announced the second-generation version of
its QuickBench simulation test-bench modeling tool, which generates bus-functional verification models from original timing specifications.

Tuesday March 11, 1997

Cadence offers chip extraction, reduction

Reasserting its traditional strength in IC verification, Cadence Design Systems has introduced its first hierarchical full-chip extraction and resistance-capacitance (RC) reduction products. In so doing, Cadence is hoping to leapfrog competitors that have already tackled these two areas, which are considered to be vital for deep-submicron IC design.

Ziatech dips twice on Pentium, PCI bus

Ziatech Corp.'s new dual-Pentium Pro CPU board for Compact PCI ups the ante on a PCI bus segment to eight slots. It also has provision for driving two separate PCI-bus segments, which enables a nicely symmetrical dual-processor, dual-bus-segment system with as many as 14 I/O cards.

Cabletron switches aim at wiring closets

Cabletron Systems Inc. turned to a quick redeployment of SmartSwitch ASICs to new backplanes in order to develop departmental-level LAN switches that could challenge the Cisco Systems Catalyst 5000 family.

IBM, Mitsubishi fuse drive technologies

IBM Japan Ltd. has contributed its hard-disk-drive design know-how and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. its microcontroller with embedded-flash-memory technology to jointly develop a hard-disk-drive controller IC.

N+1 UPS offers redundancy

American Power Conversion (APC) has launched an N+1 uninterruptible power-supply (UPS) system that borrows on the power-sharing philosophy of redundant switching supplies to address three major trends in midrange power protection.

Monday March 10, 1997

Ultrasparc II ushers Sun into supercomputing

Sun Microsystems will enter the supercomputer market Tuesday in a big way, when it unveils the Ultra HPC line of symmetric multiprocessing systems. The move is aimed at extending Sun's profitable Web- and enterprise-server business into the higher performance, technical arena.

Broadcasters told it's time for digital TV

It's time for U.S. broadcasters to put up or shut up, as digital TV moves from the demo phase to deployment. A key question is whether broadcasters can deliver the goods, and the only way to find out is to get digital TV on the air and let consumers vote with their remotes.

Fibre Channel vendors fret over compatibility

While most of the focus at the RAID Advisory Board's Fibre Channel Now Conference here was on the emergence of that interface, many vendors expressed concern that compatibility issues may arise as more products become available. To that end, engineers are focusing on interoperability.

Q phone leads bid for CDMA at show

Qualcomm Inc. made an all-out effort at Wireless '97 last week to silence critics of its Code Division Multiple Access air interface, introducing several CDMA phones, including the palm-sized 1.9-GHz Q for access to personal communications systems.

Days are numbered for Moore's Law, ACM97 told

Moore's Law took a beating at the 50th anniversary bash that the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) threw last week, as speaker after speaker predicted that the law's linear extrapolation of double-density chips every 18 months won't last for the next 50 years.

Mobile net to carry multimedia images

Toshiba Corp. has completed an early implementation of a mobile multimedia communications system that relies in part on the yet-to-be-finalized MPEG-4 compression standard for mobile video.

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