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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 21, 1997Despite suit, Intergraph wants its Pentium IIsIntergraph Corp. today vowed that continued supplies of Pentium II processors must be guaranteed for any resolution of its acrimonious legal dispute with Intel Corp. "That would have to be part of the settlement," said Jim Meadlock, Intergraph's CEO.
Work advances on token ring, Gbit Ethernet specsThe IEEE's 802 committee for LANs and WANs made great strides at a busy general meeting here in mid-November, progressing on both token ring and Ethernet fronts. The 802.5 working group for token ring sent three project-authorization requests to a special review committee to ask for new task forces for 100-Mbit copper token ring, 100-Mbit fiber token ring and Gigabit token ring.
High-tech industry called driver of U.S. economyThe U.S. high-tech industry is flexing its economic muscle here by promoting the pivotal role of electronics manufacturing and software development in driving the nation's economy. According to a "Cybernation" report released last week by the American Electronics Association (AEA) and its new partner, NASDAQ, the high-tech industry is the largest U.S. manufacturing employer, the single-largest industry in the United States measured in sales and leads the nation in exports.
Rift over upgrade proposal divides GPIB campA firefight has broken out over modifications to the decades-old GPIB (IEEE 488.1) standard, just as an amendment is about to go to ballot. The 11th-hour battle pits Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's largest instrument maker, against National Instruments and a slew of others looking to speed GPIB from 1 to 8 Mbytes/second.
What's under the tree for holiday shoppers?Is a picture worth a thousand bucks? Consumer-electronics companies are betting that enough consumers will think so this holiday season to snap up digital satellite receivers, digital still cameras and DVD players at total outlays that exceed the sacrosanct $500 consumer price point.
November 20, 1997Despite suit, Intergraph wants its Pentium IIsIntergraph Corp. today vowed that continued supplies of Pentium II processors must be guaranteed for any resolution of its acrimonious legal dispute with Intel Corp. "That would have to be part of the settlement," said Jim Meadlock, Intergraph's CEO.
Synopsys library offer spotlights interoperabilitySynopsys Inc. this week will offer to license its ".lib" ASIC-library format to anyone who wants it. Synopsys thus hopes to pioneer a new method for getting proprietary standards into the marketplace. The offer, however, is apparently competitive with OVI's Advanced Library Format (ALF), forcing an industry choice between the public-domain ALF and the proprietary but openly licensed .lib format.
Networks harness supercomputersThe quest to build the ultimate supercomputer is showing signs of becoming enmeshed in the networking revolution. As the technical program at last week's Supercomputing 97 (SC97) show revealed, clusters of high-performance workstations linked to central supercomputing resources may prove to be the ultimate problem-solving tool.
Semiconductor arm keys restructuring at TemicOn the selling block since July, the semiconductor arm of Temic Telefunken Microelectronic GmbH is playing a major role in that company's overall restructuring, as Temic prepares to drop digital circuit designs in favor of mixed-signal RF components aimed at mobile-telecommunications applications.
Probe technique isolates TFT parametersA simple technique for measuring the intrinsic properties of amorphous-silicon thin-film transistors ( a-Si:H TFTs) may prove beneficial in optimizing existing and future fabrication processes.
IBM plans state-of-the-art 300-mm faciityIBM Microelectronics has disclosed its plan to build a state-of-the-art 300-mm (12-inch) wafer pilot facility here for future gigabit DRAMs, 64-bit microprocessors and systems-on-a-chip. The center will be based on guidelines generated by the 13-member International Consortium I300I, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sematech (Austin, Texas).
November 19, 1997Synopsys library offer spotlights interoperabilitySynopsys Inc. this week will offer to license its ".lib" ASIC-library format to anyone who wants it. Synopsys thus hopes to pioneer a new method for getting proprietary standards into the marketplace. The offer, however, is apparently competitive with OVI's Advanced Library Format (ALF), forcing an industry choice between the public-domain ALF and the proprietary but openly licensed .lib format.
X86 CPU cloners set to forge 3-D pactUnder pressure from Microsoft, AMD, Cyrix and Centaur Technology are on the verge of agreeing to support a standard set of 3-D graphics instruction-set extensions that would challenge--and possibly beat to market--Intel's plans for the next-generation of its MMX technology.
Intergraph and Intel in legal flapA scant month after settling its patent battle with Digital Equipment Corp., Intel Corp. finds itself embroiled in another major legal row--this time, with x86 workstation vendor Intergraph Corp. Intergraph fired the first salvo, filing a lengthy lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Alabama, charging Intel with a host of what it termed "anticompetitive practices."
LTX platform handles systems-on-silicon testHow to test systems on a chip is a quandary that may rank with Fermat's Theorem in terms of the concentration required to yield a solution. In the case of the LTX Corp., it took the form of an elaborate, open-ended market study. The result of that study is Fusion, a single platform for SOC testing.
IBM, Toshiba first to move to giant MR headsIBM Storage Systems Division and Toshiba Corp. upped the ante for the disk-drive industry last week when they rolled out the first disk drives that use giant magnetoresistive heads. The companies are making their shift before the rest of the drive industry has completed its transition to MR heads, thus underscoring the rapid pace of advancements in drive technology.
Fibre Channel arbitrated-loop switch unveiledGadzoox Networks Inc.'s Denali is a storage-area network switch intended not for general switching-fabric duties, but as a system for switching and segmenting Fibre Channel arbitrated loops.
HP takes the wraps off test solution for ADSLHewlett-Packard Co. has jumped to the head of the pack with a pioneering ADSL manufacturing test solution. Introduced at the recent International Test Conference (ITC) in Washington, the solution meets ADSL and POTS industry-standard specifications (ANSI T1.413 and ITU T-0.133) and supports both carrier amplitude/phase modulation and discrete-multitone technologies. It targets low-cost volume production of ADSL modems.
November 18, 1997X86 CPU cloners set to forge 3-D pactUnder pressure from Microsoft, AMD, Cyrix and Centaur Technology are on the verge of agreeing to support a standard set of 3-D graphics instruction-set extensions that would challenge--and possibly beat to market--Intel's plans for the next-generation of its MMX technology.
Intergraph and Intel in legal flapA scant month after settling its patent battle with Digital Equipment Corp., Intel Corp. finds itself embroiled in another major legal row--this time, with x86 workstation vendor Intergraph Corp. Intergraph fired the first salvo, filing a lengthy lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Alabama, charging Intel with a host of what it termed "anticompetitive practices."
Synopsys, Altera embrace Web-centric designTargeting collaborative design and product and service distribution over the Web, companies are pushing intranet, extranet and electronic software transfer (EST) technology to new levels. Synopsys Inc. and PLD provider Altera Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) are among the companies committing staff and big budgets toward what several insiders call the next generation of industry distribution and workflow management.
Mammoth displays take on the mainstay CRTThe beginnings of a transformation in the display world was apparent at Comdex last week as the mainstay CRT fell under attack on a number of fronts. Aside from 14- to 17-inch LCD monitors making a run at the desktop and 40- to 42-inch plasma-display panels (PDPs) jumping into the presentation-monitor segment, there was a new contender for big-screen applications where the direct-view CRT has not ventured: the rear-projection LCD.
Startup taps rising demand for third-party librariesAn announcement today by startup Virtual Silicon Technology Inc. (VST) spotlights the sudden importance of third-party cell libraries. Once an arcane and under-noticed market in the noisy EDA industry, the libraries--and their developers--are now center stage, say designers and users across a wide spectrum of companies, because of the restructuring of the CMOS manufacturing infrastructure.
Rivals gather to blast Microsoft's global strategyThe public debate over who will control the Internet and a myriad of Net-related services was joined here last week as Microsoft Corp.'s chief rival called for government intervention to ensure consumer choice on the Web. Speaking at an anti-Microsoft conference organized by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, Sun Microsystems Inc. chairman Scott McNealy said there is "no place where choice is more important than the information industry."
NEC, Philips join forces on intellectual propertyTaking a "bilateral approach" to the thorny problems posed by integrating intellectual property (IP) cores, NEC Corp. and Philips Semiconductors have agreed to work together on MIPS-based system-on-a-chip solutions for digital consumer systems.
November 15-17, 1997Intel announces Pentium-bug workaroundIntel Corp. late Friday said it had come up with a workaround for the recently disclosed bug that crashes its Pentium and Pentium/MMX processors. The bug report surfaced a week ago in an anonymous posting on the comp.sys.intel newsgroup.
Specs drive toward plug-and-play EDAThe holy grail of electronic design automation--software interoperability--could be a lot closer to reality by springtime, thanks to an effort now gearing up at the EDA Industry Council to forge a collection of specifications enabling links among disparate software tools. The first specification to emerge is likely to be a VHDL synthesis subset standard.
Standards gap blocks ramp to smart highwayAn ambitious effort to transform the nation's 40,000 miles of clogged interstate highways into an efficient, automated people-moving network has hit a familiar roadblock: insufficient standards.
New design formulaThe rise of the low-cost personal computer is forcing a sea change in how companies approach the PC at the chip, board and system levels. That shift will be apparent in design and strategic decisions all across the show floor at Comdex/Fall this week.
Refocused Temic mounts SiGe bid in mobile telecomTemic Telefunken Microelectronic GmbH has tipped plans for a restructuring designed to establish an early lead in silicon-germanium RF components for mobile-telecommunications applications. The company will tap its own SiGe process--developed over two years--to square off against Harris Semiconductor and others that have secured access to IBM Microelectronics' SiGe process technology, with hopes of rolling communications devices next year.
NEC turns Virtual Channel on memory latenciesWhile DRAM interface designs such as Direct Rambus and double-data-rate (DDR) synchronous DRAM strive to increase instantaneous memory bandwidth, NEC Electronics Inc. today will announce an attack on the bottleneck that limits aggregate bandwidth: precharge latency.
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