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   Friday, June 5, 1998Merced's dark cloud gives silver lining to Digital's Alpha(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/5/98)While Intel Corp. stayed mum on the causes and systems vendors dismissed the effects of the delay in the Merced processor, long-suffering Digital Equipment Corp. suddenly found itself with a thin ray of hope in pitting its Alpha microprocessor against Intel's processor dominance. Congress jumps into debate over 3G wireless spec(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/5/98)The transatlantic debate over a wireless-communications spec has entered the political arena, as U.S. opponents of a single global wireless standard favored by European rivals asked Congress to help ensure that the new framework accommodates competing technologies. Troubled Motorola to cut 15,000 jobs(9:00 p.m., EST, 6/4/98)Motorola Inc. announced it will lay off 15,000 workers, or 10 percent of its staff, over the next 12 months as part of a move to save $750 million. The company did not specify where the reductions would occur or how many engineers might be affected. U.S. debates dual-use technology exports to India(9:00 p.m., EST, 6/4/98)Interim export control guidelines that have been put in place for India and Pakistan give U.S. high-tech companies some flexibility in keeping their commercial contacts in the world's two latest nuclear powers. Motorola and Lucent to share competitive load in DSP alliance(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/4/98)In a bold move widely seen as a direct attack on DSP leader Texas Instruments Inc., Lucent and Motorola announced plans this week to collaborate on development of new DSP cores and tools. While the deal could shift the balance in this growing market, analysts foresee significant hurdles for the market's No. 2 and No. 3 DSP suppliers, who have agreed to cross-licensing some of their existing products. Thursday, June 4, 1998Intel alters its 32-bit processor road map(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/4/98)Improved production yields with its 0.25-micron process technology will allow Intel Corp. to introduce its Katmai Pentium II processor ahead of schedule, and to add a 300-MHz version of its Celeron processor with integrated L2 cache to its 1998 processor road map, the company said. Motorola quietly preps digital consumer platform(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/4/98)Motorola Inc.'s Semiconductor Products Sector is quietly creating a new business structure and partnerships within its consumer systems group with an eye toward launching a closely guarded digital entertainment platform this year code-named Blackbird. Job recruiting rages on the Web(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/4/98)The online recruitment of job candidates has become a rage of the Web. Just ask Texas Instruments Inc.'s full-time "cyber-recruiter," John Nelson, who spends his day scrolling through Web sites for highly prized engineers who've posted their resumes. University spin-off aims to be 'tool-less' EDA company(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/4/98)In the spirit of the fabless chip company and the chipless chip company comes Advanced Bytes and Rights Ltd. (AB&R), an aspiring "tool-less" design-automation company. Microsoft exec pushes CE on a consumer crowd(9:00 p.m., EST, 6/3/98)Craig Mundie, senior vice president responsible for Microsoft Corp.'s Consumer Platforms Division, came to the International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE) to preach to unconverted members of the choir. National's Halla calls for 'useful' information appliances(9:00 p.m., EST, 6/3/98)Brian Halla, National Semiconductor Corp.'s president and chief executive officer, outlined his vision of inexpensive computer systems based on highly integrated silicon at the Computex conference in Taiwan this week. TI integrates RF modulator, synthesizer in silicon(9:00 p.m., EST, 6/3/98)Texas Instruments Inc. has integrated a radio-frequency modulator and synthesizer in CMOS months ahead of several other manufacturers known to be exploring RF integration in CMOS. The company will announce its development at the Microwave Technology and Techniques Symposium held here next week. Welcome to life in Silicon Wadi(9:00 p.m., EST, 6/3/98)It's a small country, with its military constantly at the ready. Citizens are issued gas masks when they're born. Everyone seems to want a piece of Israel — including the engineers who leave the "safety" of the United States to live there. Wednesday, June 3, 1998MPEG decoders to take less memory with new scheme(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/3/98)Digital TV has turned the corner and has changed from a promising consumer technology to a practical design challenge for both system and IC design engineers. A novel memory-reduction algorithm is being developed for integration into future MPEG-2 decoder ICs. TeraStor details plans for 10- and 20-Gbyte disk drives(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/3/98)High-profile startup TeraStor Corp. has divulged more details about its forthcoming products, which will use novel optical and magnetic technologies to provide high capacity. The initial products have taken a somewhat conservative approach, storing 10 Gbytes on a single-sided 5.25-inch disk. A 20-Gbyte version is due out in a little under a year. SI Diamond eyes comeback with hybrid display(9:00 p.m., EST, 6/2/98)SI Diamond Technology Inc. has emerged from a two-year turnaround effort lean, mean and touting a new and different way to use its carbon-diamond field-emission-display (FED) technology. Backing away from its initial goal of LCD-killer FEDs for notebook computers, the company is putting the finishing touches on a hybrid concept that combines FEDs and CRTs in a thinner-than-CRT display at a lower-than-FED price. Tripath introduces digital audio amplifier IC(9:00 p.m., EST, 6/2/98)At the Computex conference this week, Tripath Technology Inc. introduced the first in a line of digital audio amplifier ICs. The chips utilize Tripath's proprietary class-T audio amplifier technology, which provides a signal-to-noise ratio that's equal to audio CDs, but with lower power demands than standard amplifier solutions. Tuesday, June 2, 1998DSP rivals, Motorola and Lucent, become partners(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/2/98)Motorola Inc. and Lucent Technologies Inc. today announced a blockbuster deal to swap their digital signal processor and microcontroller cores and to set up a joint design center to develop future DSP cores and platforms. Device speeds image rotation(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/2/98)A experimental device may make image correlators considerably more powerful for use as preprocessors in electronic and optical image-processing applications. Under development at the Information Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the device allows an input image to be rotated about an axis, to any one of many possible angles, in just 10 microseconds. Teradyne creates Web-based 'teststudio' environment(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/2/98)When the Nepcon show opens its doors in Boston next week, Teradyne Inc. will open a door of its own. The test company is set to unveil an open, Web-based ATE operating environment of the sort that test engineers have been dreaming about for years. QNX moves its real-time OS to RISC processors(9:00 p.m., EST, 6/1/98)QNX Software Systems Ltd. has developed versions of its QNX RTOS real-time operating system for the PowerPC and MIPS processor architecures, thus extending the RTOS' reach beyond the X86 platform. Microsoft promises to fix bugs in virtual private net protocol(9:00 p.m., EST, 6/1/98)Microsoft Corp. said it has released a series of fixes and is preparing others for an encryption flaw in its implementation of a communications protocol used in virtual private networks. Designers warm to chip-scale technology(9:00 p.m., EST, 6/1/98)Chip-scale packaging is still in its infancy, but the technology is moving forward quickly. Memory-chip makers are beginning to adopt the technology and move it into production, sparking a number of advances for future-generation products. Sematech's Squires dead at 53(9:00 p.m., EST, 6/1/98)Frank Squires, a top official of the Sematech research consortium, died May 30 after suffering a heart attack. He was 53. Monday, June 1, 1998NEC to build 300-mm wafer fab in California(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/1/98)Though it's keeping a wary eye on demand from the systems market, NEC Corp. is expected to announce today that it will build a 300-mm (12-inch) wafer fab at its Roseville, Calif., facility that will go into production in 2002, when 1-Gbit DRAMs begin their volume ramp. Rockwell gets physical with ATM chips(3:00 p.m., EST, 6/1/98)Rockwell Semiconductor Systems will unveil the fruits of two years' work on mixed-signal devices at this week's ATM Year 98 conference here, taking the wraps off a series of 3.3-V physical-layer devices for 155-Mbit/second asynchronous-transfer-mode networks. The Peak family will augment Rockwell's segmentation-and-reassembly (SAR) processors, developed in its Boulder, Colo., network-access division, formerly part of Brooktree Corp. and Base2 Systems Inc. Intel's Merced delayed to 2000(11:45 p.m., EST, 5/29/98)Intel Corp. said today it has pushed back the production schedule of its Merced processor to mid-2000 from 1999. U.S., Japan vendors race to develop media processors(11:45 p.m., EST, 5/29/98)Prompted by consumer systems' swing from analog to digital technology, semiconductor vendors are suddenly crowding into the plodding media-processor market, led by Japanese companies keen to regain some of the ground they lost years ago in the microprocessor wars. Equipment makers crank up for the copper era(11:45 p.m., EST, 5/29/98)Two major players in the semiconductor equipment sector — Novellus Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) and Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) — will separately make big news in copper interconnects in the coming week. The technology, coveted for its promise of gigahertz speeds with low power consumption, is being propelled from prototype to production by IBM, Motorola and other chip vendors. Crypto flaw found in Microsoft net product(10:00 p.m., EST, 6/1/98)A computer security expert will announce today that he has found a flaw in Microsoft Corp.'s implementation of a communications protocol used in many virtual private networks. Embedded DRAM breaking out of its niche(11:45 p.m., EST, 5/29/98)After several years of playing to a niche market, embedded DRAM is about to enter its second phase of production as IC vendors tune their ASIC processes to 0.25-micron technology. This time around, the technology could become more widespread as the density of on-chip memory doubles in size and as IC vendors introduce new capabilities to improve performance. Silicon Graphics drops suit against processor startup(11:45 p.m., EST, 5/29/98)Silicon Graphics Inc. has dropped its lawsuit against Artx, a processor startup founded by former SGI employees who helped develop the silicon architecture used in the Nintendo 64 gaming system. The allegations of the suit, which had been filed under seal in April in Santa Clara, Calif., were not disclosed. AMD tunes K6-2 for digital video, audio, 3-D(11:45 p.m., EST, 5/29/98)Taking its competitive struggle with Intel Corp. to the next level, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. unveiled its K6-2 processor here and at the E3 gamers show in Atlanta this past week, with a new instruction set, called 3DNow, optimized for 3-D gaming and digital video and audio. TI's new CMOS process pumps out 2.5-Gbit/s transceivers(11:45 p.m., EST, 5/29/98)Texas Instruments Inc. has developed a deep-submicron CMOS process that can build data transceivers operating at up to 2.5 Gbits/second. The process will be unveiled at the upcoming 1394 Developers Forum in San Jose, Calif. Short-range wireless camps seek common ground(11:45 p.m., EST, 5/29/98)While proposals for short-range, wireless links continue to proliferate, two major camps are seeking a meeting of the minds. |
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