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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 May 2, 1997Taiwan suppliers insist their boards meet Intel's specsPentium motherboards made in Taiwan meet or exceed Intel reference specifications, their makers say, sharply taking issue with suggestions that corners had been cut to battle competitive pressures.
AMI buys Focus SemiconductorAmerican Microsystems Inc. (AMI) has acquired Focus Semiconductor Inc., a privately held company in Lower Gwynedd, Pa.
Overcapacity won't last, fabless companies predictAs balance is restored to semiconductor supply and demand, fabless companies expect modest, steady growth, according to the latest survey from the Fabless Semiconductor Association.
Malaysia's first fab reaches the qualifying stageBulldozed out of the surrounding jungle, Technology Park Malaysia is home to that country's first indigenous IC fab. Mimos Berhad is now qualifying its first run of ICs. Malaysia has plans to open five more fabs by the year 2000.
Exar zooms in on digital camerasExar Corp. (Fremont, Calif.) is focusing on the digital-camera market, integrating its image-conditioning and A/D circuits on a single IC.
Intel plans "Webcast" from China to roll out Pentium IIOn Wednesday, May 7, at 7 p.m. PDT, Intel Corp. will announce the rollout of its Pentium II live over the Internet. Dr. Craig Barrett, chief operating officer for Intel, will make the announcement from Shanghai, China. The Internet Pentium II event will be available as text, audio and audio/video formats, in both English and Chinese.
Thursday May 1, 1997Intel bids to break copyright stalemateStriving to break a stalemate over how best to safeguard copyrighted material traversing a digital serial bus, Intel Corp. has stepped forward with a comprehensive content-protection scheme for IEEE 1394. If the movie, PC and consumer-electronics industries embrace the Intel solution, it would one day become integral to the digital interface of every PC and digital consumer-electronics device sold.
MIT atomic laser emits coherent beams of matterLeveraging the fact that all particles of matter have an associated wave, physicists at the Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) have devised an "atomic laser" that emits coherent beams of sodium atoms. The discovery could have an impact on materials engineering and device fabrication by offering highly precise methods for manipulating matter on the atomic scale.
Zuken-Redac realigns for U.S. assaultIn an attempt to bring its worldwide leadership in pc-board CAD revenue to the U.S. market, Japan-based Zuken-Redac has moved several key strategic marketing functions to Zuken-Redac USA. One of these functions will be the release of the company's first IC router at next month's Design Automation Conference.
Japan leaps into DVD-RAMHitachi Ltd. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., moving quickly to roll out recordable DVD disk drives, have announced DVD-RAM drives only a week after the DVD-Forum finalized the DVD-RAM Version 0.9 specification.
Trident unveils modular sound system for PCsTrident Microsystems hopes to leverage its position in the PC-graphics market by integrating a collection of PC-audio technologies in a portable form, as part of its PC-graphics products. The company unveiled SoundSuite as a low-cost, highly integrated PCI-based audio solution for PC OEMs.
Wednesday April 30, 1997Affordable mini displays arriveThe price/performance equation in miniature displays is dramatically shifting. In the latest move, Kopin Corp. is sampling what's claimed to be among the smallest, densest commercial display device out there, at aggressive prices.
Sharp spins media processor that's data-drivenSharp Corp. has developed a parallel-processing data-driven media processor (DDMP), and plans to bring this non-von Neumann architecture to the microprocessor market.
Mentor in coverification dealTo extend the reach of its hardware and software coverification environment (CVE) to be unveiled in May, Mentor Graphics Corp. has signed a development partnership with electronic-design technology-service provider Duet Technologies (San Jose, Calif.).
Toshiba's 16-bit line tackles math-intensive choresToshiba America Electronic Components Inc. has broadened its 16-bit microcontroller line with a device that has both a multiply/add calculator and a duty cycle controller. The low-power device is targeted at embedded markets that have math-intensive requirements, eliminating the need for a DSP chip for math tasks.
Sentient adds IP services to central-office switchSentient Networks Inc., a newcomer in the telco central-office switch world, garnered attention in late 1996 by launching an Any Service/Any Port (ASAP) architecture. For Version 2.0 of the Ultimate 1000 ASAP switch, Sentient is adding Internet Protocol services through Point-to-Point Protocol links.
Proxim shrinks format of wireless-LAN clientOnly months after reducing its RangeLAN2 wireless-LAN client to a PC Card form factor, Proxim Inc. began receiving complaints that it was not small enough. Designers went back to redesign the baseband and RF-board layout, and came up with an OEM micro module for the motherboard, measuring 1.65 x 2.65 x 0.23 inches and weighing 0.7 of an ounce.
Tuesday April 29, 1997Duo brings theatre to a desktop near youClaiming that they have reached a milestone in the evolution toward digital convergence, Compaq Computer Corp. and Thomson Consumer Electronics (Indianapolis) raised the curtain this week on a jointly developed PC/TV product. But the product, called PC Theatre, may not be ready for prime time.
In the red, Cirrus lays off 400 and restructuresDuo briStruggling Cirrus Logic will lay off 400 employees after losing more than $50 million in its just-completed fourth quarter.
Tiny polymer displays edge toward productionUniax Corp. has completed a $2 million prototyping line for its light-emitting polymer displays and plans to have it operational in July. When commercial production begins by the third or fourth quarter of next year, initial products will be small, monochrome dot-matrix displays for cellular telephones and pagers.
HP and Fluke ally under reciprocal distribution pactIn a surprising move that could have wide repercussions in the test-and-measurement industry, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Fluke Corp. have agreed to distribute some of each other's products.
Monday April 28, 1997Time-bomb ticks in no-name Pentium motherboardsThere may be a ticking time-bomb in millions of Pentium motherboards. The problem boards--often low-cost or no-name brands--skimp on the number and quality of capacitors that are required to smooth out voltage spikes around the CPU, a U.S. electronics executive has charged. As a result, they don't meet Intel's power specifications and are subject to unexpected failures that could trash data and files of unsuspecting consumers.
Upheaval looms for IC design methodologiesAdvanced ASIC and IC design methodologies in the year 2000 won't look much like today's, participants told the recent International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD-97). The design-tool crisis has become so severe, they said, that only radically new approaches will get multimillion-gate, deep-submicron chips out the door.
Magneto-resistive drive heads prep for 'giant' leapThe disk-drive industry is converting swiftly to magneto-resistive (MR) heads, and industry leaders are moving to the next generation for head technology, giant MR (GMR) heads, much sooner than expected. Tuesday, Seagate Technology Inc. will divulge some of its plans for GMR, and last week IBM Storage Systems Division announced a couple of milestones in its MR efforts.
'Simple' solutions roil Gigabit Ethernet arenaIt's no surprise that Gigabit Ethernet will take center stage when the NetWorld+Interop show kicks off here a week from Monday. But one trend that's sure to open a few eyes is the attention being paid to simpler Gigabit Ethernet structures. Suddenly, it seems possible to make money with Media Access Control (MAC) chips and the interface cards that use them, and with simple uplinks and repeaters that stay away from the complex routing of Ethernet packets.
Prices slide on 16-Mbit DRAMs, as 64-Mbit yields climbLast year, as Japan's fabs closed down for Golden Week and executives went off their guard, South Korean companies went on a market-share grab that sent 16-Mbit DRAM prices plummeting, according to the view espoused by many here. Now, the DRAM market is in a shaky period again, with prices on 16-Mbit parts dropping sharply since mid-April.
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