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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 June 6, 1997Digital chief girds for battleA month ago, Digital Equipment Corp.'s Robert B. Palmer was among the most visible men in the computer industry, propelled into the spotlight by Digital's stunning patent suit against Intel Corp. Today, the bunkers are going up at Digital headquarters here as forces on Wall Street and Main Street--and, of course, at Intel--circle the embattled chairman and chief executive.
Internet upgrade hits budget, political obstaclesA government-university effort to upgrade the Internet is bogging down in pork-barrel politics and interagency squabbles.
Samsung widens focus, eyes new growth areasFor Samsung Electronics Corp., 1996 was a "reality check" kind of year: semiconductor revenue fell by 22 percent, to $6.3 billion. This year, Samsung is taking steps on a broad range of fronts--perhaps too broad, some analysts argue.
Semicon Run: charity served by engineering feetSemiconductor Equipment and Materials International is organizing the firstSemicon Run corporate relay race, a fund-raising event scheduled to take place the day before the organization's Semicon West 97 conference opens.
Two license light-emitting polymer technologyDisplay company Uniax Corp. and materials supplier Hoechst AG have each signed licensing agreements with Cambridge Display Technology Ltd., based in England, covering light-emitting polymer technology.
Thursday June 5, 1997IBM tries to tame X-ray lithographyOver the past several months, IBM Corp.'s Microelectronics Division here has been conducting an ambitious effort to push the mask-manufacturing envelope in X-ray lithography to a new level. After years of building X-ray masks based on guessing games about the longevity of optical lithographic methods, the company has taken a new tact by directly confronting the inherent limitations of X-ray mask manufacturing.
Alpine targets interchip delaysTo overcome the bottleneck of chip-to-chip delays, startup Alpine Microsystems has developed a high-speed interconnect technology that can be used to create multichip assemblies in standard surface-mount packages.
Web to host soft-computing conferenceThe second online World Conference on Soft Computing (WSC2) will convene on the Web June 23, with hosts sponsoring simultaneous access from London; Bath, England; Bombay, India; and East Lansing. The grist of WSC2--its technical papers--will present the latest global developments in such soft-computing technologies as neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms (GAs) and evolutionary programming. Previews of the papers will be posted online starting June 16.
Altera, Xilinx battle in high-end PLDsAltera Corp. and Xilinx Corp. are battling it out again at the high end of the programmable-logic market, with each claiming to have the industry's densest programmable part.
TI shows combo transceiverTexas Instruments Inc. has unveiled its combo 10/100-Mbit physical-layer transceiver as the first offering in a family of analog Ethernet devices that will interface with TI's digital LAN chips. Slated to follow this new 10/100-Mbit transceiver during the rest of the year will be a quad 10/100-Mbit device, an octal 10-Mbit device, and its first physical-layer device for Gigabit Ethernet.
HP targets Gigabit EthernetAs part of a wealth of Gigabit Ethernet introductions that cover everything from test equipment to servers, Hewlett-Packard Co. has introduced a serializer/deserializer chip designed specifically for Gigabit Ethernet. The HDMP-1636 Serdes device has TTL-compatible I/O, though the company plans to follow it up quickly with a positive emitter-coupled logic (ECL) device.
Wednesday June 4, 1997Motorola's 16-bit MCU holds 50 kbytes of flashMotorola Inc.'s Microcontroller Technologies group is piling on flash E2PROM in its latest 68HC16 family member of 16-bit microcontrollers.
TI shows combo transceiverTexas Instruments Inc. has unveiled its combo 10/100-Mbit physical-layer transceiver as the first offering in a family of analog Ethernet devices that will interface with TI's digital LAN chips.
Upgraded Picasso refines ATPG artSynTest Technologies Inc. has produced its first major upgrade to its six-year-old Picasso automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) product.
3Dlabs melds 2-D, 3-D processing in one chipGraphics-chip maker 3Dlabs is trying to bring its 3-D technology down from the stratosphere and into the volume markets with its latest Permedia 2 device.
CD-ROM decoder supports 45x data transferCirrus Logic Inc. has unveiled a CD-ROM decoder chip that will be able to handle several generations of faster drives, since it will support up to a 45x data-transfer rate.
Tuesday June 3, 1997Startup follows new tack for embedded memoryA startup thinks it will be able to anticipate the actual memory needs of system-IC designers. Virage Logic Inc. plans to offer the full line of tools--compilers, automatic built-in-self-test (BIST) generation and diagnostic capabilities--needed to integrate memory cells into a manufacturable ASIC.
Toshiba wrestles with quarter-micron ASICsThe move to 0.25-micron process technologies under way at major ASIC vendors brings greater chip densities and higher speeds, but greater risks as well. As non-recurring engineering (NRE) charges approach a half-million dollars for standard-cell devices, Toshiba Corp.'s work with its TC240 quarter-micron family indicates some of the difficulties that can surface in the pursuit of finer-line-width ASICs.
Trial weds comm standardsA U.K. company and the U.S. inventor of code-division, multiple-access (CDMA) technology are planning a field trial to demonstrate the integration of CDMA within a Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) network. Launched by Vodaphone, one of the U.K.'s mobile cellular-telephone-service operators, and Qualcomm Inc. (San Diego), the trial seeks to demonstrate compatibility between the CDMA air interface and existing GSM infrastructure. Potentially, that could open a route to merging what are now competing standards.
Analysis: Reed Hundt foresaw computer, TV convergenceReed Hundt, who announced last week he is stepping down as FCC chairman after three tumultuous years, redirected the debate over a U.S. digital-TV transmission standard in ways no one imagined when he took the FCC's helm in November 1993. Hundt succeeded in shifting the focus from high-definition TV, the cause cılıbre of broadcasters and the consumer electronics industry, to the PC-friendly notion of "digital TV.
New processor drives STM buyout of MetaflowSGS-Thomson Microelectronics (STM) has bought a majority stake in Metaflow Technologies Inc. and is using the Metaflow design team to create a new, general-purpose microprocessor.
Sony seeks partner for low-temp polysilicon LCDsSony Corp. and Toyoda Automatic Loom Works Ltd., the founding company of the Toyota Motor Group, are negotiating the joint manufacture of low-temperature, polysilicon active-matrix (AM) LCDs. The arrangement would give Sony the production capability to grab at emerging high-volume display opportunities, including the enormous automotive market, and it would enrich Toyota with captive access to leading-edge display components.
Monday June 2, 1997Optical interconnect fashioned in CMOSLSI Logic Corp. will demonstrate at Supercomm a speed breakthrough that could alter the future of optical interconnect in modestly priced systems. The first fruits of research with Alcatel Data Networks on low-cost optical interconnect using CMOS transceivers, the CMOS ASIC directly links a 622-Mbit/second data channel to an optical transceiver, bypassing expensive and space-consuming gallium-arsenide or BiCMOS drivers.
Don't touch that dial: Digital radio's up nextA select group of chip vendors and consumer-electronics companies will meet this week to hammer out a scheme for what they hope will be the first successful deployments of satellite-based digital-audio-broadcast (DAB) services. Digital-radio transmissions to Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia could start as soon as year-end 1998.
PC graphics market woes endanger '3-D for free'The PC graphics market was rocked last week when two marginal players signaled their plans to quit the field and a market leader struggled to reposition itself. The shifts come as chip makers try to redefine the role and feature sets of their 3-D graphics chips in light of eroding silicon prices and looming competition from a host of players, including Intel Corp.
Upgrades to VME fight off challenge from CompactPCIWith a speed-doubling mode due to hit the streets next month and a revolutionary, speed-quadrupling scheme set to roll next year, the VMEbus is girding to defend its position against the nascent CompactPCI bus. Now a third competitive enhancement is in the works for VME. Whereas the other schemes aim to outstrip CompactPCI's data rate, the latest approach would preempt that bus by incorporating PCI into the VME fabric.
VSI adds Alcatel, seeks resolution with ASIC CouncilThe Virtual Socket Interface (VSI) alliance filled one gap last week, by adding a large European systems maker, Alcatel, to its Steering Working Group (SWG). And the alliance may be close to resolving a more significant gap that has kept six large ASIC vendors from fully taking part in VSI.
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