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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, November 14, 1997Vinod Dham resigns from AMDAdvanced Micro Devices Inc. lost a key player on the microprocessor front when Vinod Dham resigned this week. Dham, vice president of the computation products group, had joined AMD with its acquisition of NexGen Inc.; before that, he had worked at Intel Corp. and played a large role in the initial Pentium rollout.
Comdex PreviewIn a series of articles, EE Times discusses the issues shaping, influencing, and concerning the upcoming Comdex conference in Las Vegas. From the practical to the philosophical we give you a comprehensive 'sneak peek' at what's in store.
Time-Rover offers formal testing tool free on WebTo help introduce designers to a new type of software tool, Time-Rover Co. is offering Temporal-Rover Lite, a formal specification and testing tool, free over the World Wide Web. The current version supports Java only, but future versions will support C and Verilog. Temporal-Rover lets users write formal specifications into source files, using a formalism called "temporal logic."
3Com taps U.S. Robotics tech for one-way cable modem3Com Corp. is taking advantage of the telephone-return-path cable-modem technology developed at the former U.S. Robotics Inc. (Skokie, Ill.), as well as that company's Total Control switch, to mount a coup at next monthýs Western Show in Anaheim, Calif. 3Com plans to be the first OEM to ship production units of a one-way cable modem supporting the Data over Cable Service Interface Specification, part of the Multimedia Cable Network Systems (MCNS) spec.
China OKs smart-card standardThe People's Bank of China, China's Central Bank and Visa International have signed a memorandum of understanding whereby the Chinese government will finally accept Visa's EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) standard for smart-card transactions. The move could result in production of as many as 200 million smart cards in just a few years. In another development, Visa has picked a VeriFone Inc. technique to let consumers load cash onto smart cards from their homes.
Apple launches G3-based computers, online salesApple Computer Inc. last week launched product lines based on the G3 version of the PowerPC processor along with an ambitious program to sell computers on the World Wide Web. The announcements were made by interim chief executive Steve Jobs at a gathering for press and analysts at a nearby events center.
Thursday, November 13, 1997Avant! loses $31M in Silvaco suitThe hidden cost of acquiring companies has become painfully evident for Avant! Corp., as the Santa Clara County Superior Court ordered the company to pay Silvaco International (Santa Clara) a total of $31.4 million in two separate hearings this month. The judgment stems from a 1993 legal dispute between Silvaco and MetaSoftware, which Avant! acquired for roughly $160 million in 1996.
WebLogic offers tool to create Java applicationsWebLogic Inc., an early leader in database tools, is claiming that its Tengah application server is the first integrated-services server environment to be written entirely in Java. WebLogic will be pursuing OEMs, independent software vendors and specialists in integrated development environments as customers and partners, offering developers the first full-fledged tool for creating Java applications.
Conceptual filtering 'SIG pidgins' home in on Web infoA conceptual filtering method that uses artificial "pidgins" to find specific Web information for particular groups is being designed by Autospec Inc. "The context in which we need or want information items is seldom found in the context in which the items are found, but rather belongs to a special interest group, or SIG," said Stanley Rice, founder of Autospec and a former director or editor at several major publishing houses.
IBM design kits bring copper into mainstreamIn an effort to push copper-interconnect technology into the mainstream, IBM Corp. is readying design kits for developing copper-based ASICs that could be available as early as January. The company's new direction for using high-conductivity copper ratherthan aluminum technology, announced last month, targets high-performance data-processing and graphics environments as well as low-power wireless systems.
Western Digital says price pressure is eroding profitWestern Digital Corp. announced its second-quarter earnings will be lower than expected, citing pricing pressure. For the quarter ending Dec. 27, the company expects net income to fall between 20 cents and 30 cents per share, compared with the 83 cents per share analysts had been expecting.
Digital signature bill introducedDigital-signature legislation introduced Wednesday in the House would make government forms available online and permit citizens to sign forms using digital signatures.
Wednesday, November 12, 1997Parts roll in for portablesS3 Inc., ATI Technologies Inc. and newcomer Silicon Motion Inc. have announced graphics chips that promise to significantly boost the features, performance and power management of next year's portable PC systems. S3's new Virge/MXi, which will be available in sample quantities this month, takes S3's existing Virge/MX core and links it via a 128-bit bus to 2 Mbytes of the company's homegrown DRAM array.
AMP four-pair UTP system targets Gbit Ethernet, ATMAMP Inc. is rolling out a new four-pair unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) cabling system that will form the heart of the company's standards efforts to define what the Telecommunications Industry Association calls Category 6 wiring. The NetConnect Quantum system is a full cabling subsystem, entailing updated connectors and patch panels as well as the twisted-pair itself.
Matsushita to sell DVD-RAM at penny per MbyteMatsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. said it will market a DVD-RAM drive and disks at strategic prices in the United States beginning in January. Word of the company's product plans came as Pioneer Electric Corp. and Ricoh Co. Ltd. disclosed plans for two derivative systems.
IBM spins 9.1-Gbyte hard drive at 10,000 rpmIBM Corp.'s Storage Systems Division has thrown its hat into the high-performance ring for disk drives with a 10,000-rpm unit that stores 9.1 Gbytes on just six platters. The drive features a Fibre Channel interface, and marks IBM's endorsement of this serial interface.
Anzen UPS line produces pure sine-wave outputTo protect high-end PCs, servers and other sensitive electronics from power surges, International Power Technologies Inc. has come out with the Anzen family of intelligent uninterruptible power supplies (UPSes). The line is designed to produce reliable power during interruptions, outages or other hazardous conditions.
Tuesday, November 11, 1997Intel confirms latest Pentium glitchIn the latest round of cyberspace bug-hunting, an anonymous report of a glitch that can crash Intel's Pentium and Pentium/MMX processors has surfaced on the comp.sys.intel news group.
U.S., Europe tackle digital-TV interfaceAs attention turns to the needs of a new generation of interactive applications, the battle to shape the future of digital television has shifted to the API front. In the United States, the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) has formed a group that will meet here for the first time today and tomorrow to study the requirements for a DTV applications-programming interface.
Motorola, Sarnoff developing DTV chip setMotorola Consumer Group and Sarnoff Corp. are working together on a chip-set architecture for digital-TV receivers. Using a combination of hardwired engines, signal processors and PowerPC or ColdFire 32-bit CPUs, they plan to develop a family of chip sets that would span a range of emerging markets--from inexpensive set-top decoders to full-up 1,080 x 1,960-pixel high-definition televisions (HDTV).
Hitachi licenses its SH-3 RISC core to Seiko EpsonSeiko Epson Corp. last week joined VLSI Technology Inc. as the only licensees of Hitachi Ltd.'s SuperH-3 RISC processor-core technology. Seiko Epson intends to develop system ICs, building its devices around the SH-3 core on one chip, for portable information equipment, such as mobile telephones and personal digital assistants.
Mini memory card targets mobile-telecom appsSiemens Semiconductors and SanDisk Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) have launched a removable memory-card format aimed at next-generation smart phones and other mobile telecommunication products. The Multimediacard (MMC), which is about the size of a postage stamp, measuring 32 x 24 x 1.4 mm, will join at least three other competing miniature memory-card formats in the market.
Monday, November 10, 1997Pattern-matching processor could speed net routingA startup company here is combining mathematical field theory, associative computing and ASIC design skills to come up with a processor that could revolutionize such diverse fields as network routing, pattern recognition and data mining.
Test crisis looms as next-gen ICs outrun ATETest engineers and vendors who gathered at the 28th International Test Conference here last week agreed they face a real struggle to keep up with the demands of mixed-signal chips, core-based ASICs, systems-on-silicon and other complex ICs, and still keep equipment prices down. While some announcements held out hopes for progress, many showgoers cited a crisis in which test is falling behind the increasing demands of next-generation silicon.
An ASIC synthesis one-twoSynopsys Inc. hopes it will bring harmony to the ASIC synthesis world this week when it officially introduces Module Compiler, an automated datapath-compilation tool that works as a companion to the company's Design Compiler tool.
Protocol mix brings promise, problemsThe rollout of asynchronous-transfer-mode (ATM) backbones and enhanced Internet Protocol networks is resulting in a clash of new protocols that is creating as many problems as promises for tomorrow's multimedia-ready, broadband networks, according to designers at last week's IEEE Globecom conference, here.
Hybrid gas/electric Toyota hits the roadToyota Motor Corp. (Tokyo) likes to say its cars are fun to drive. One of the fun things about driving the Toyota Prius is watching the LCD that indicates whether the gas engine or the electric motor--;or both--;is sending energy to the drive train.
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