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   Friday, June 12, 1998Compaq pledges volume sales for Alpha(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/12/98)In formally announcing the completion of its acquisition of Digital Equipment Corp., Compaq Computer Corp.'s chief executive, Eckhard Pfeiffer, made a surprisingly strong statement of support for the Alpha microprocessor and Digital's Unix operating system as part of a new corporate focus on 64-bit computing. Multilayer RF printed circuit boards star at microwave conference(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/12/98)Multilayer circuit boards for RF transmitters and receivers could pave the way for cheaper, lighter-weight cellular handsets. Soft boards with film dielectrics have been used to reduce the size and weight for airborne telemetry equipment. Conference serves alphabet soup of DSLs(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/12/98)As the Universal ADSL Working Group wrapped up a physical-layer draft standard for splitterless asymmetric digital-subscriber-line service, the Supercomm '98 show here this week delivered a clear message that the numerous DSL derivatives will be long-lived in carrier networks. Motorola and IBM end collaboration at PowerPC design center(9:00 p.m., EDT, 6/11/98)Motorola Inc. and IBM Corp. said on Thursday that they will end their joint ownership of the Somerset PowerPC microprocessor design center in Austin, Texas, and leave Motorola as its sole proprietor. Sony proposes open architecture for entertainment robots(9:00 p.m., EDT, 6/11/98)The folks who brought you the Walkman are readying what they hope will be the next big fad in personal entertainment: robots. Sony Corp. has proposed its freshly minted Open-R (Open Robot) architecture as an open platform for a market niche that does not yet exist. Motorola and IBM show off SRAMs with copper interconnects(9:00 p.m., EDT, 6/11/98)IBM Corp. and Motorola Inc., which unveiled their respective copper-interconnect processes at last December's International Electron Devices Meeting, surfed into the 1998 VLSI Technology Symposium here this week with fast SRAMs manufactured on those copper-enhanced processes. Thursday, June 11, 1998Tower Semi preps CMOS image sensor foundry service(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/11/98)Tower Semiconductor Ltd. is offering a new foundry service tailored specifically to the production of high-quality CMOS image sensors. Japan looks to system ICs to restore chip competitiveness(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/11/98)Where has Japan's competitiveness gone? Can a charge into system-on-a-chip (SoC) design and technologies save its day? From the looks of it, SoC may be the next miracle Japane needs. IBM spends $100 million to add ASIC muscle(9:00 p.m., EDT, 6/10/98)IBM Microelectronics today announced a $100 million expansion of its ASIC capability, including the addtion of more than two dozen new cores, a bolstering of its mask-making operations and a head-to-head challenge to Texas Instruments Inc. in the digital signal processor market. Software execs lobby for IP treaty and against crypto plan(9:00 p.m., EDT, 6/10/98)The U.S. software industry buried the antitrust hatchet long enough to again condemn U.S. encryption policy and urge Congress to approve intellectual-property legislation. 'Cookbook' shows entrepreneurs how to start a company(9:00 p.m., EDT, 6/10/98)Silicon Valley venture capitalist Elton B. Sherwin Jr. calls his new book, The Silicon Valley Way, a "cookbook" of recipes to get a company started. Industry debates need for mini-display standard(9:00 p.m., EDT, 6/10/98)Industry reaction has so far been mixed to a proposal by The MicroDisplay Corp. requesting that an interface standard be developed specifically for miniature displays. One critic of the proposal, which was put forth at the recent International Conference on Wearable Computing, said the industry should address the lack of compelling applications for wearable computers before it concerns itself with standards. Wednesday, June 10, 1998IBM moves to protect DRAM from cosmic invaders(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/10/98)Cosmic rays, which for several decades have been observed as the cause of "soft" errors in ICs, could become more of a problem for the new breed of workstations and servers with large banks of DRAM modules. TI and Synopsys collaborate on design reuse methodology(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/10/98)Texas Instruments Inc. and Synopsys Inc. have jointly developed a system-on-a-chip design methodology based on TI's 0.25- and 0.18-micron technology, and will offer it to TI customers and internal design groups in the fourth quarter. EE wages still rank among the highest(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/10/98)EEs rank sixth on the U.S. Department of Labor's latest list of the 25 highest-paid occupations. Doctors and lawyers topped the tally, while computer scientists came in No. 10. Epson will apply low-voltage technology to ARM7 Thumb core(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/10/98)Seiko Epson Corp. (Suwa, Japan) has licensed the ARM7TDMI 32-bit RISC microprocessor core from ARM Ltd. here, and intends to apply its low-voltage technology to the core to develop products for multimedia terminals and mobile communications applications. G-Link offers sensitive CMOS sensors for industrial cameras(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/9/98)G-Link Technology, a manufacturer of specialty-memory ICs and a new entrant for the digital-imaging market, has launched its first black-and-white, high-dynamic-range CMOS digital imager for the industrial camera market. The HDRC4 CMOS imager offers a resolution of 512 x 256 pixels, 120 dB and supports 120 full frames per second. By keying on certain parts of an image with random pixel addressing, G-Link can update up to 4,000 frames per second. Tuesday, June 9, 1998Gingrich says feds shouldn't pay for schools' Net connections(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/9/98)In a speech that opened the Supercomm '98 show on Monday, Rep. Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) chided Vice President Al Gore's plan to pay for school Internet connections through a phone tax mandated by the Federal Communications Commission. ICC sessions explore transport protocols, WDM architectures(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/9/98)Technical sessions at this week's IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) explored a wide variety of advanced research efforts, ranging from new transport protocols to next-generation photonic architectures, to new broadband services over wireless and space-based networks. U.S. hits Intel with antitrust charges(6:00 p.m., EDT, 6/8/98)Confiming long-standing reports of a pending antitrust suit, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Monday charged Intel Corp. with using "its monopoly power to cement its dominance over the microprocessor market." IDT's 32-bit core borrows functions from 64-bit cousin(6:00 p.m., EDT, 6/8/98)Integrated Device Technology Inc. (IDT) has introduced a 32-bit processor core that it says will provide many of the functions that have only been available on a 64-bit RISC processor. The company has developed a standalone processor based on the core, but has crafted it to be combined with other functions on one device. Holographic material could yield terabyte storage disk(6:00 p.m., EDT, 6/8/98)A new holographic material based on polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) holds out hope for very dense read-only data storage applications. Invented in the former Soviet Union and now being developed at both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cal Tech, the material is said to offer low expense, high diffraction efficiency and no shrinkage. Monday, June 8, 1998NEC president says technology requires new work ethic(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/8/98)Hisashi Kaneko, president of NEC Corp., told an opening day audience at Supercomm '98 that the advent of several new broadband technologies requires the development of a new work ethic and a new management style. Samsung to halt chip production for one week(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/8/98)Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. announced today that it will halt all of its memory-chip production for one week beginning Sunday, June 14. The move is Samsung's response to the worldwide glut in the semiconductor market, which has led chip prices to fall. Two vendors validate accuracy of Simplex's Fire & Ice tool(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/8/98)United Microelectronics Corp. and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. have validated the accuracy of results from Simplex Solutions Inc.'s Fire & Ice extraction tool, putting the figures within ý10 percent of silicon measurements for each foundry's 0.35-micron process, Simplex will announce this week. Specialized chips may speed detection of harmful bacteria(3:00 p.m., EDT, 6/8/98)Doctors may soon take only minutes to test a blood sample to determine if a patient's food poisoning comes from E. coli or salmonella bacteria. Such a test, which would be much faster than the passive hybridization techniques currently used in patient diagnoses, could be made possible by bioelectronic technology developed by scientists at Nanogen Inc. (San Diego). Lack of accord on copy protection threatens DTV(11:45 p.m., EDT, 6/5/98)With only five months to go before the scheduled digital TV rollout, service and equipment providers have yet to achieve formal consensus with Hollywood production studios on a copy-protection scheme for consumer device interfaces. That could cripple the initial commercial prospects for DTV, which is locked into a Nov. 1 debut, as well as delay standardization of the OpenCable spec, which dictates how cable set-top boxes will "pass through" signals for high-definition TV and data services. Foundries, Motorola catch a dose of the Asian flu(11:45 p.m., EDT, 6/5/98)The Asian flu is spreading into a broader recession in the electronics industry. WDM deals unplug circuit-based telecom(11:45 p.m., EDT, 6/5/98)On the eve of the Supercomm '98 show, the circuit-oriented Public Switched Telephone Network is rapidly coming to resemble an endangered species. A flurry of unexpected announcements in the past week underlined an industry-wide push to packet-switched local and long-distance public networks based on wavelength-division-multiplexing optical technology. Dueling interface standards jeopardize takeoff of flat-panel monitors(11:45 p.m., EDT, 6/5/98)A war of connectors threatens to make the transition to digital interfaces for flat-panel monitors a minefield for PC designers. The industry's inability to decide on one standard is putting a damper on efforts to craft a plug-and-play flat-panel monitor interface analogous to the one used in today's analog CRTs, just as the market is beginning to heat up. Researchers claim method slashes process costs(11:45 p.m., EDT, 6/5/98)A research group at Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan) has proposed a concept for semiconductor-fabrication lines that could lower the total cost for semiconductor processes to one-tenth of their current levels. The concept was presented at the Semicon Kansai '98 conference, held here June 3-5. Boeing and Radcom form pact for 622-Mbit ATM test development(11:45 p.m., EDT, 6/5/98)Boeing Co.'s former ARGO Systems test and measurement group has formed an alliance with Radcom Equipment Inc. (Mahwah, N.J.) wherein the two will jointly market a protocol analysis system for 622-Mbit/second networks. Boeing's auto-discovery concepts should scale in speed to other Sonet OC layers at 2.5 Gbits/s, 10 Gbits/s and faster speeds, and should scale to add possible photonic wavelength-division-multiplexing layers. |
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