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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, December 19, 1997X86 twist in Sun patent pactA broad patent cross-licensing deal just inked by microprocessor rivals Intel Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. specifically excludes all of Intel's x86-related patents, a source close to the company said. Officials at Intel declined to comment.
Vishay pays $500 million for Temic's chip divisionPassive-components maker Vishay Intertechnology Inc. (Malvern, Pa.) agreed to pay about $500 million to buy the semiconductor operations of Temic Telefunken Microelectronic GmbH, which had been up for sale since the summer. The acquisition includes power-semiconductor maker Siliconix Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.), of which Temic owns 80.4 percent.
QuestLink adds e-commerce to design-data siteTiny Internet technical-information provider Quest-Link Technology is bent on transforming its EE Design Center into a powerhouse Web tool for design engineers.
Wireless services take soft pathA startup formed by executives from some of the world's biggest communications companies is about to launch a suite of modular software that it will use to become a new type of business partner for carriers and OEMs.
Integral eyes opening in 3-inch-drive marketThe recent decision by Western Digital Corp. to drop out of the 3-inch drive market will have a big impact on little disk-drive maker Integral Peripherals Inc. The company, founded to make 1.8-inch drives, is once again hoping to become a leading player in a new drive form factor, in the hope that 3-inch drives can supplant 2.5-inch drives in notebook computers.
Synopsys ignites memory-modeling competitionMemory-modeling tools occupy a commercially competitive marketplace, since Synopsys Inc. unveiled its MemPro model generator this month. The tool will compete with Memory Modeler from Denali Software Inc. (Palo Alto, Calif.).
Thursday, December 18, 1997Avant! braces for Dec. 19 court rulingA court ruling expected this Friday, Dec. 19, may result in a ban of one or more products of Avant! Corp. from the market, sources said this week. Avant!'s stock fell roughly 20 percent on Monday based on fears that the company's current Aquarius product could be banned, but the stock recovered slightly on Tuesday to close at 17 1/16.
Expert system tackles pc-board EMIAn industry-backed project at the University of Missouri at Rolla (UMR) is devising a printed-circuit-board analysis system that will aid system designers with electromagnetic interference. Called the EMI Expert System Consortium, the group is working on an expert system to help engineers debug RF problems on boards and meet federal emissions standards. The three-year project has more than $1 million in funding from consortium members.
Cold, hard fact is fine--but sci-fi is fantasticTrue sci-fi aficionados never like to be slapped in the face with reality. But after an evening's lecture from physicist and author Lawrence Krauss, hundreds of Jean-Luc Picard fans were forced to reconsider their romantic notions about just how close their technofantasies are to becoming real.
Tunneling junctions realize small RAM cellTunnel junctions formed in thin oxide layers are being employed at the Hitachi Cambridge Research Laboratory to reduce the size of semiconductor memory cells. A stack of multiple tunnel junctions plays a role similar to a capacitor in a DRAM or a floating gate in an E2PROM cell.
White House chips in with research fundsJust weeks after an industry group called for increased government support for the U.S. semiconductor industry, the Clinton administration announced a series of initiatives designed to advance IC manufacturing and other systems technology.
Wednesday, December 17, 1997SGI, Microsoft mend fences in 3-D interface warMicrosoft Corp. and Silicon Graphics will announce Wednesday that they will collaborate on a new Application Programming Interface for 3-D applications, ending a year-long feud between the two companies over how software developers should write code to 3-D hardware.
Display chips to power desktop monitorsProducts using aggressively priced, miniature "display chips" will start hitting markets next year, according to reports at last week's Stanford Resources Flat Information Display conference here.
Audio spec discussed at first DVD forum meetingThe DVD Forum held its first general meeting here this month amid mushrooming membership--from the original 10 to 122 companies worldwide. "The DVD Forum is a rare organization in the world which will continuously work on setting DVD specifications incorporating new technologies," said Taizo Nishimuro, president of Toshiba Corp., which is the chair company of the group.
STM, Hitachi to build 64-bit SH processorsIn an effort to put their combined corporate clout behind a single embedded-RISC effort, SGS-Thomson Microelectronics and Hitachi Ltd. formally unveiled plans, tipped last week to undertake joint development of 64-bit microprocessor cores for the Super-H family. The processor architecture will be backwards compatible with Hitachi's SH-4 and is being targeted as a general-purpose engine for a wide range of products.
Tuesday, December 16, 1997SGI, Microsoft mend fences in 3-D interface warMicrosoft Corp. and Silicon Graphics will announce Wednesday that they will collaborate on a new Application Programming Interface for 3-D applications, ending a year-long feud between the two companies over how software developers should write code to 3-D hardware.
Can Scotland build system-chip haven?With the announcement of a huge design center to be built in the Silicon Glen here, Cadence Design Systems Inc. and Scotland have hatched a new approach to the manifold problems of system-on-a-chip design.
Flash device reads, writes at 1.8 VLaying claim to a flash-memory milestone, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. last week introduced a device that performs read and write operations at 1.8 volts using a conventional flash architecture.
Bigger silicon role, mergers roil internetworking arenaThe acquisitions of two young Layer 3 switch companies last week seemed to fulfill the prophecy that the Gigabit Ethernet switching market was overcrowded and due for consolidation. But Nokia Oy's purchase of Ipsilon Networks Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Lucent Technologies Inc.'s acquisition of Prominet Corp. (Marlborough, Mass.) held far broader implications.
Mentor, Synopsys, TSMC to team for core developmentProclaiming the first "cross-industry partnership" focused on developing process-specific cores, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) last week disclosed that they'll cooperate on the development of test chips and hard cores. The latter will be derived from Mentor's Inventra soft cores.
Mitsubishi's new process fuels embedded-DRAM driveAfter several years of being "the best-kept secret in embedded DRAM," in the words of assistant vice president Thomas Liao, embedded-DRAM pioneer Mitsubishi Electronics America Inc. is using the announcement of a 0.25-micron eDRAM process to raise its profile. The company today will unveil not only a highly sophisticated new process, but also an impressive list of design wins and shipment figures for its previous three generations of eDRAM processes.
Monday, December 15, 1997Lucent nabs allies for next-gen lithographyLucent Technologies is quietly forming a 10-company partnership aimed at taking its Scalpel scanning e-beam lithography system out of Bell Labs and into the marketplace, EE Times has learned. The goal is to deliver a working Scalpel system by 2003 for high-throughput 0.13-micron lithography on 300-mm wafers, capable of at least 50 wafers per hour.
Deep submicron goes deeper at IEDMUltra-deep-submicron devices aren't that far off, judging by advancements announced at last week's 1997 International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM) here. MITI's Electrotechnical Laboratory, in Japan, broke new ground in single-electron memory cells.
Judge bars Windows bundling as new OS shipsJust as some PC makers are poised to launch systems based on a new integrated version of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 95 and its Internet Explorer 4.1, a federal judge has barred Microsoft from bundling the two in OEM sales. In a preliminary ruling in an antitrust suit filed by the Department of Justice earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Thomas Jackson last Thursday ordered Microsoft to stop requiring computer makers to take Internet Explorer as part of a licensing deal for Windows.
IEDM scrutinizes craze over copper interconnectionsIBM's September announcement that it had integrated copper interconnects into a double Damascene process set the agenda for much of the discussion at the 1997 International Electron Devices Meeting here last week, just as it had at the much larger Semicon Japan gathering the week before.
Digital set-top's hard road comes into viewA fresh view of where the digital set-top box needs to go and the challenges it will meet in getting there emerged at the Western Cable Show last week. The Internet--rather than PC operating systems or microprocessors--will be the defining feature of the platform, cable-TV executives said. But just how the set-top will support the Net's requirements or the advent of HDTV broadcasts is still being debated.
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