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Headlines and summaries from the pages of Electronic Engineering Times . Previous editions are available from the 1994 , 1995 , 1996 , 1997 , and 1998 News Archives.
Friday, April 2 4, 1998FTC acts to ensure a supply of Alpha microprocessors(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/24/98)The Federal Trade Commission will require multiple production sources for Digital Equipment Corp.'s Alpha microprocessor technology as part of a settlement last week that clears the way for Intel Corp. to acquire Digital's IC manufacturing operations. Intel and Digital said they plan to complete the acquisition as soon as possible. Cable companies grilled on digital-TV transition(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/24/98)With broadcasters set to start transmitting digital TV in various formats this fall, attention is shifting to how those signals will get to consumers and whether cable operators must relay them in their original format. GEC's bid for U.S. military electronics firm may hit opposition(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/24/98)The proposed acquisitio n of military electronics specialist Tracor Inc. by the U.K.'s General Electric Corp. (GEC) is expected to create a leading competitor in the "integrated digital battlefield" market, the new partners said. NEC touts browser as standard factory interface(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/23/98)Extending the reach of Web-browser technology beyond home and business computing, NEC licensed a browser last week from Spyglass Inc. that it will promote as a standard user interface for factory floors. Mixed modeling approach espoused for system-level design(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/23/98)The ability to mix different models of computation is the key to system-level design, according to Ed Lee, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California (Berkeley). In a keynote address at the DSP World conferenc e , Lee discussed EDA research at U.C. Berkeley that allows such a mix. Cadence teams with Power X to design switching-fabric IC(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/23/98)Power X Ltd., a switching-fabric IC developer, has signed a $1 million contract with Cadence Design Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) for a multi-phase program to bring Power X's TeraChannel technology to data networking markets by this fall. The project involves the design of test circuits with multiple versions of gigabit transceivers designed in standard CMOS processes. ADI proposes open architecture for DSP tools(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/23/98)Analog Devices Inc. (Norwood,Mass.) has announced the VisualDSP graphical framework, which is intended to provide a unified development environment for the company's 32-bit Sharc DSPs. Thursday, April 23, 1998Intel, AMD part way s on high-density flash memory(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/23/98)Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the two biggest names in flash memory, will take different paths toward high-density devices in coming years. While Intel continues to hone its multilevel-cell NOR product for better reliability and speed, AMD will pursue a home-grown architecture more akin to serial NAND devices for certain application segments, while pushing its conventional NOR technology to higher densities. Vendor support ebbs for bare-dice deliverables(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/23/98)After a big initial push, chip makers' interest in shipping bare dice has waned in the past two years, with some major IC vendors backing off and others subcontracting their known-good-die programs to companies that specialize in bare-die handling. Opposition grows to high-tech visa increases(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/23/98)The debate over whether to expand a U.S. immigration program is heating up as controversial legislation raising the annual cap on high-tech visas heads for a showdown in the Senate. Seiko Epson to spin out electronic products operation(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/22/98)Seiko Epson Corp. is planning to spin off a new subsidiary, named Epson Electronics America, that will sell system components in the U.S. merchant market. Fab-equipment vendors flock to China(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/22/98)Makers of IC fabrication equipment and material flocked to Shanghai this week to SEMI's biannual conference in China. Over 100 sellers of IC fabrication, assembly or test products or materials attended this show, looking to cash in on a potential booming market in Asia's otherwise economic desert. With the exception of Taiwan, fab growth is Asia appears headed for stagnant growth. Intel sketches process, product plans(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/22/98)Intel Corp. is pressing ahead with plans to bring up a next-generation 0.18-micron process technology even as it postpones its shift to 300-mm (12-inch) wafers to beyond the year 2000. U.S. and China at odds over equipment shipments(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/22/98)A recent ruling by the Chinese government appears to put it on a collision course with a continuing U.S. policy toward the export of fab equipment to China. U.S. government policy is to deny export and technology licenses for fab equipment that can produce ICs using below-0.5-micron process technology. Early this year, China passed an exclusion to its 40 percent tariff on imported capital equipment which includes fab gear that can produce line widths at or below 0.35 micron. The Chinese tariff exclusion seems a direct challenge to the U.S. desire to limit the nation's access t o high technology. Downsizing of ministries off to a slow start in China(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/22/98)A move to half China's bloated government ministries is going less than smoothly, and has raised concerns in the nation's information technology industry. Applied Materials awaits tenfold increase in sales to China(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/22/98)Ready to pick the first fruit of its 14-year history in China, Applied Materials China (AMC) expects to sell $20 million of equipment in China this year. Though this pales in compariso n to the $800 million in sales that Applied Materials made in Taiwan last year, it hints that the China market may someday be for real. Wednesday, April 22, 1998LSI Logic licenses Siemens' Carmel core(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/22/98)LSI Logic Corp. will be the first company to license Siemens AG's recently announced Carmel DSP architecture, and will collaborate with Siemens on new versions of the core to strengthen its position in the market for GSM phone chips, the company told the DSP World Conference this week. Cadence on course to become first $1 billion EDA company(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/22/98)Cadence Design Systems Inc. is on track to become the electronic design industry's first billion dollar company. In releasing financial results for its first fiscal quarter of 1998, Cadence's revenues seemingly show no ill effects from the Asian financial crises, the company said. Motorola enhances OS to lessen telecom downtime(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/22/98)Motorola Computer Group (MCG) is prepared to roll out a split-mode enhancement for the AIX operating system this week that will let telecommunications-service providers upgrade their computer systems with out downtime. When running on MCG's FX Series of fault-tolerant computers, "split mode enables the achievement of the long-elusive benchmark of 'five-nines' [i.e., 99.999 percent] reliability, or a maximum of 5 minutes and 15 seconds of planned downtime a year," said Noel Lesniak, product line manager for telecommunications and fault-tolerant platforms at MCG (Tempe, Ariz.). Near-term concerns occupy world's chip makers, exec says(11:30 a.m. EST, 4/22/98)Akita Inoue, chairman of Tokyo Electron Corp. told a SEMI Semicon China seminar on Wednesday that the global chip industry could grow to nearly $1 trillion by 2015. But chip makers have a more immediate concern of making their current businesses profitable, he said. Preparing for an IPO, Chrysalis names a new president(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/21/98)With an eye on an initial public offering (IPO) in its foreseeable future, formal verification provider Chrysalis Symbolic Design Inc. has named Isadore T. Katz, its vice president of marketing, as president. Allan L. Wallack, former president, remains as chairman and chief executive officer. Russian design house preps scalable neural-net emulator IC(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/21/98)RC Module, a Russian design house that has been building neural-processing systems based on Texas Instruments Inc. DSPs since its inception in 1990, recently developed its own digital superscalar neural-network-emulation IC. Asian flu will linger, Siemens chief says(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/21/98)The economic collapse in Asia has created two major camps among semiconductor companies: those taking defensive action — voluntary or otherwise — and those whistling past the graveyard, forecasting no major change in business strategy, at least until further notice. Tuesd ay, April 21, 1998Oak buys former Hyundai consumer group(4:00 p.m. EST, 4/21/98)To reduce its dependence on the sale of optical storage devices, Oak Technology Inc. has acquired from Hyundai Electronics America key assets of that company's former consumer microelectronics division, Odeum Microsystems Inc. Odeum had developed audio and video decoding devices for use in set-top boxes. Intel bids to challenge Picturetel on videoconferencing(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/21/98)Intel Corp. is expected to introduce a Pentium II-based videoconferencing system at next week's DVC Conference in San Jose, Calif. Like the top systems from Picturetel Corp. (Danvers, Mass.), the current market leader in videoconferencing systems, Intel's TeamStation system will utilize video and audio compression, and tap ISDN lines to display and control remote video in a large-screen format. But unlike Picturetel, the Intel system will include a built-in document server with Microsoft Office tools. Spectrum acquires Sharc expert for its DSP business(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/21/98)DSP-systems provider Spectrum Signal Processing Inc. will merge with closely held Alex Computer Systems in a cash and stock deal worth about 8 million Canadian dollars. The company's stock rose a few cents yesterday on the news, to close at 6 3/8. LSI Logic builds D-Fire under digital radio broadcasts(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/21/98)LSI Logic Corp. (Milpitas, Calif.) has produced a single-chip baseband processor for digital radio signals that adhere to the Eureka-147 Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) standard. Called D-Fire, the chip was developed for Robert Bosch GmbH (Stuttgart, Germany), a maker of automotive and communications equipment. Actel puts faster local-r outing connections on its FPGAs(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/20/98)Actel Corp. has introduced a speedy FPGA architecture that employs a tighter routing interconnect structure to deliver performance that's fast enough to meets the requirements of key communications applications, the company said. The SX series devices place Actel among a select group of FPGA vendors that have emphasized fast I/O and internal performance. Motorola tunes PowerPC for auto apps(9:00 p.m. EST, 4/20/98)Motorola Inc.'s Semiconductor Products Sector has developed a 32-bit, PowerPC-based microcontroller for both engine and transmission control of next-generation, electronics-intensive automobiles due in 2000. The controller contains 6.7 million transistors, which matches the integration levels of high-end processors like the Pentium II and Alpha. Monday, April 20, 1998Acquisition brings wire -optimization software to Sagantec(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/20/98)EDA supplier Sagantec has acquired MicroCAD (Haifa, Israel), a developer of physical design software. The value of the acquisition was not disclosed. Smart cars roll toward smart roads(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/20/98)Automotive electronics is about to begin a second wave, changing the way drivers perceive electronic technology. During the last quarter of this century, microprocessors showed up in engine control,transmissions and brakes, but they will be far more visible during the next decade. Gov revs R&D funding for intelligent transport systems(3:00 p.m. EST, 4/20/98)Underscoring the need to improve traffic movement, more than half of the Transportation Department's $496 million fiscal 1999 budget request for research and development is earmarked for an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). The effor t focuses on developing smart-car technology and deploying "intelligent infrastructure," such as a data-communications network. Cray, SRC craft new supercomputing architectures(11:45 p.m. EST, 4/17/98)Two "offspring" of the late supercomputer pioneer Seymour Cray are pushing the boundaries of high-end computing with innovative architectures now in the works. Word of the designs comes as some observers see a rebound in what has been a declining market for supercomputer-class systems. IP spin-off gambit is no sure bet for MIPS(11:45 p.m. EST, 4/17/98)The MIPS architecture group — which has been, in order, a university project, the heart of an eponymous failed workstation company and a division of Silicon Graphics Inc. — is about to embark on another new incarnation. This time it will be as an intellectual-property provider in the embedded-computing world. Boston's Scholz engineers a rock dynasty(11:45 p.m. EST, 4/17/98)The rock band Boston is familiar to just about anyone with a radio. But few fans may realize that the creative force behind Boston's distinctive sound is an engineer. Scholz reinvented rock-processing equipment(11:45 p.m. EST, 4/17/98)Though the creative force behind the rock group Boston, Tom Scholz had an engineering problem. Because of the limitations of mid-1970s guitar-processing equipment, he couldn't quite get the majestic rock music sound swirling around in his head to translate easily to tape. PC makers adopt alternatives to Rambus DRAM(11:45 p.m. EST, 4/17/98)Despite Intel Corp.'s attempts to promote the Direct Rambus architecture acro ss all systems starting in 1999, a number of PC makers are designing high-end systems that use alternative SLDRAM and double-data-rate DRAM components now under development. Such moves could provide the first base of customers critical for the continued evolution of alternative high-performance DRAMs. |
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