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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, October 24, 1997National, Cisco recoup benefits from the NetThe Internet has caused a paradigm shift at two of the electronics industry's largest companies. By moving to an Internet-centric corporate-wide engineering and sales environment, National Semiconductor Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) and Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) have saved millions, wracked up billions in new sales, found new ways of communicating on design projects, and implemented increasingly faster Web connections for engineers around the world.
LCD advances repel FEDs, other challengersActive-matrix LCDs dominate the flat-panel display market and are expected to do so for the foreseeable future, successfully fending off market incursions from such alternatives as organic electroluminescent and field-emission displays, experts said at a forum here last week.
Motorola to offer Web-based verification toolMotorola Inc. is planning to offer design engineers increased functionality over its Web site by year's end via an interactive memory-model generator. The company has partnered with two-year-old system-verification tool provider Denali Software (Palo Alto, Calif.) to employ the Internet to enable fast and accurate communication of the memory specification between the memory designer and the system designer, virtually eliminating the distance between them.
Oregon employers team up on Web to tout IC careersFacing the common problem of a shortage of local engineers and technicians, several Northwest electronics companies have joined forces for an unprecedented two-year campaign to create awareness of the job opportunities that the region's electronics industry represents.
Engineers find lots of work in wirelessWhat are the hot technologies of today? And do they lead to the best jobs? The 1997 EE Times Salary & Opinion Survey offered some clues, based on input from 679 U.S. engineers and engineering managers.
Thursday, October 23, 1997Sale of GEC Plessey proceeds, in piecemeal fashionGEC Plessey Semiconductors Ltd. (GPS), the chip-making subsidiary put up for sale by the United Kingdom's General Electric Co. in July, is being broken up to make it attractive to potential buyers, despite a desire within the company to sell the operations as a single entity.
Two FED vendors target automobile dashboardThe graphics LCDs that are the rage of the notebook computer market are a bust in the automotive market, according to U.S. auto industry executives at the recent Flat-Panel Display Strategic Forum and Technical Symposium in Ypsilanti, Mich.. But two heavy hitters on opposite ends of the Pacific are pushing hard to field an alternative display technology with the performance and economy to entice the auto industry away from its long romance with analog dials and gauges.
Program hands surfers turnkey access to Web robotsAn easy-to-use Web "spider" can now be added to either Netscape's Navigator or Microsoft's Explorer browser to provide Net surfers with their personal Web agent. Called Subject Search Spider (SSSpider), the software package is being offered by Pkware Inc.
Confab looks to all-optical networksAll-optical network technology is emerging as a major force in the world fiber market, according to R&D presentations at last week's 20th Annual Newport Conference on Fiber Optics Markets. Today's $10 billion world fiber market is expected to double by 2003, with the move toward all-optical networks dependent on the development of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), the implementation of Sonet systems and advances in optical cross-connect technology, presenters said.
Crystal move raises the ante for CCD chip setsCirrus Logic's Crystal Semiconductor Products Division is shipping what it says is among the most complete charge-coupled device (CCD) chip sets available for digital video cameras. The chip set includes an analog signal-processing element (the CS7615) and a digital signal-processing element (the CS7665).
New crypto technique could challenge DESNEC Corp. said Wednesday that it will release details early next year about a new encryption technology it claims could offer an alternative to the U.S. Data Encryption Standard (DES). NEC said its stronger and speedier approach is based on a technique that generates numerous fake keys and a scrambling algorithm that "stirs" text and keys to confuse illegal decryption.
Wednesday, October 22, 1997LCDs attempt to break ground in new marketsTechnology advances involving reflective liquid-crystal displays for power-sensitive handheld equipment and low-temperature polysilicon LCDs were among the hot buttons at the Japan Electronics Show '97, held here earlier this month.
Digital Semiconductor improves Ethernet controllersDigital Equipment Corp.'s Semiconductor Division came to the recent Networld+Interop show with a range of Ethernet controller chips optimized for switched work groups. Its 21340 four-port controller has been upgraded in a version that features per-port buffering for advanced traffic management in switched Ethernet applications.
Viewlogic integrates advanced memory BISTTaking aim at combined memory and logic testing of complex ICs, the Sunrise Test unit of Viewlogic Systems Inc. has outfitted its TestGen suite of test tools with an advanced memory built-in self-test solution. Included in Sunrise's MemBIST scheme are features such as fault diagnostics (MemBIST interfaces to HPL's advanced set of diagnostic and yield-enhancement tools), built-in self-repair and algorithmic programmability--as well as 12 built-in standard test algorithms.
Li-ion 'safety' chips surfaceControlling charging activity is particularly important for lithium batteries, which can explode under certain conditions. Though the new-generation lithium-ion models are far more stable than the compounds used for aerospace applications, the charging activity for Li-ion cells must be carefully controlled. That's why charging-controller ICs for lithium-ion batteries were among the hot buttons at the recent Power97 Conference here.
Tuesday, October 21, 1997Costello resigns as head of Cadence, Harding takes reinsCapping off the biggest month in EDA's young history, Joe Costello yesterday resigned from Cadence Design Systems Inc. as the company's president, CEO, and member of the board of directors. He announced that Jack Harding will now lead the company.
Microsoft/DoJ lock horns on antitrust issuesThe technical issue of whether a Web browser is a standalone product or just the next set of features of an operating system will be at the core of a debate between Microsoft Corp. and the U.S. Department of Justice which locked horns Monday over allegations of antitrust activities.
Fluid motors put a faster spin on the desktop driveSeagate Technology Inc. has unveiled the first desktop drive with a fluid-bearing motor. Predicting the technology will be in all of its drives in about three years, Seagate said the new motors--which replace ball bearings with oil--will put 7,200-rpm rotational rates on desktop systems for the first time, make continued capacity increases possible and foster a shift to even higher rotational rates.
EUV litho effort hits political snag over foreign tiesA month-old lithography consortium has stepped into political hot water by agreeing to license technology to foreign as well as U.S. tool makers. The extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) consortium, headed by Intel Corp. and partners Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Motorola Inc., has drawn fire from at least four lawmakers worried about sharing U.S.-developed stepper technology with Japanese competitors, who control about 90 percent of the manufacturing-equipment business.
ARM, Motorola lock horns in Mips/watt battleWith Motorola Inc. threatening to steal its thunder in Mips/watt, Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. (ARM) last week struck back with a RISC processor core that breaks new ground in raw performance.
Lam Research chief maps broader role in CVDLam Research Corp.'s chief executive officer, James Bagley, said here that the industrywide transition to copper interconnect and low-k dielectric materials may help Lam gain a better foothold in the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) sector of the equipment industry. Lam is promoting its Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR)-based CVD equipment for the deposition of newly emerging inter-metal-dielectric (IMD) materials, such as fluorinated silicon dioxide.
Alliance eyes 100-Mbit token-ringAmid the giddiness over Gigabit Ethernet, the token-ring camp is making its own play to develop 100-Mbit/second and even 1-Gbit/s service. At a Networld+Interop news conference here, members of the hastily assembled High-Speed Token Ring Alliance presented their goals, which include building a multivendor 100-Mbit/s token-ring network to demonstrate in the spring at the next N+I.
Monday, October 20, 1997ASICs to Windows: mergers rock EDAEDA users worldwide will feel the impact of two mergers that restructured the industry last week. Synopsys Inc., here, announced its intent to purchase Viewlogic Systems Inc. (Marlboro, Mass.) in the most expensive acquisition in EDA history. And OrCAD Inc.'s (Beaverton, Ore.) intention to buy MicroSim Corp. (Irvine, Calif.) may affect more individual users than any previous EDA merger.
Complex RISC collides with IA-64 parallelismComplex twists on traditional RISC-based superscalar CPUs vied with Intel's new, highly parallel IA-64 architecture at last week's Microprocessor Forum, here. The designs prove that all engineers are facing the same grand challenge. While forthcoming 0.25- and 0.18-micron processes will let chip designers pack as many execution units as they want on a high-power die, the problem is keeping all those functional blocks busy.
Japan's giants sample 'lite' Java alternativeA small software company here has developed a streamlined Java-like environment and is working on a middleware layer to address the complaints of Japan's consumer-electronics conglomerates that Sun's Java programming environment is neither compact enough for consumer applications nor complete enough to support communications and applications sharing among digital consumer devices.
Battle over DRAM schemes moves to high endMemory makers are conceding that Direct RDRAM will likely be the mainstream successor to synchronous DRAMs for low-end to midrange desktop and notebook systems. But, despite Intel's endorsement of the Rambus architecture for the PC, some OEMs and DRAM vendors question whether Direct RDRAMs have the scalability and cost-effectiveness for high-end servers and workstations.
Actel plans shift to stacked antifuse FPGA at 0.35 micronAntifuse FPGA leader Actel Corp. next year will make a major architectural shift to stacked technology in an attempt to keep a performance lead over SRAM-based field-programmable gate arrays. In the meantime, the company has taken the wraps off its low-cost MX FPGA family--the last generation of devices to employ the channeled antifuse technology it developed in the late 1980s.
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