(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/11/98)
VLSI Technology Inc. is launching an ambitious remedy to help breach the growing design-productivity gap with Velocity, a rapid silicon prototyping approach. The tool is essentially a configurable board-level system-on-a-chip lab based on VLSI's intellectual property and software to help turn such a board design into a system chip.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/11/98)
A former NEC Corp. executive was arrested this week as prosecutors here tried to link the electronics giant with charges that one of its affiliated companies overcharged the Japanese government for equipment purchases and then tried to bribe government officials to reduce the repayments.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/11/98)
After prolonged discussions, the DVD Forum has finally nailed down the DVD-Audio format and unveiled the Version 1.0 specifications. The DVD Forum will demonstrate the format at the DVD conference Oct. 1 and 2 in San Francisco.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/11/98)
Mentor Graphics Corp. has extended its hostile takeover bid for Quickturn Design Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) and moved a step closer to completing the possible acquisition.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/11/98)
Though down in 1998, semiconductor sales revenues should rebound in 1999, according to Semico Research Corp. (Scottsdale, Ariz.).
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/10/98)
Solidum Systems Corp. has developed a way to perform high-layer network packet processing that is less expensive than using dedicated address-resolution-logic processors or off-chip content addressable memories, the company said.
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/10/98)
ASM Lithography (ASML) today unveiled what it called the industry's first wide-field 193-nm lithography machine for leading-edge device production.
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/10/98)
Discussions at the International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies this week zeroed in on the tough job ahead in creating a new generation of software-defined radios for mobile handsets and basestations. Researchers offered ideas for tackling such thorny issues as designing a universal RF component capable of being programmed for multiple cellular and PCS frequencies.
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/10/98)
Unless some corporate angel comes to its rescue, it appears that OIS Optical Imaging Systems Inc., the premier U.S. military display supplier, will soon cease operations, becoming the third North American active-matrix LCD venture to bite the dust in recent days.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/10/98)
Despite efforts to restructure its flagging industrial and high-tech sectors, South Korea's economy remains several years from a recovery, the nation's foreign affairs and trade minister said Thursday.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/10/98)
The world's semiconductor market registered its eighth straight month of declining sales in July, with chip sales falling 1.9 percent to $9.66 billion, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. Japan's economic recession and continued pricing pressure were responsible for the decline, the SIA said.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/10/98)
APM Design Labs, a small design services firm, has thrown a potential roadblock into the growing niche market for IC process migration tools, stating that existing tools violate one of its patents.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/10/98)
Though it has a virtually complete infrastructure in space and on the Earth, Iridium LLC has pushed back commercial availability of voiceband communications services from Sept. 23 to Nov. 1.
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/9/98)
Lucent Technologies' Microelectronics Group has tapped the embedded DRAM expertise of NEC Corp. for use in its ASIC devices. The deal is the latest of several partnerships involving embedded DRAM technology and ASIC companies, which find themselves captivated by the potential of embedded DRAM and frustrated by its cost.
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/9/98)
Looking to stretch the boundaries of Web-based design of electronic circuits, Xilinx Inc. today announced initiatives to speed interactive test and improve online design evaluation.
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/9/98)
Hewlett-Packard Co. and NEC Corp. have entered a development pact that aims to optimize the HP-UX operating system to run on systems using Intel's upcoming 64-bit Merced processor. Merced will be the first implementation of Intel's new IA-64 architecture. HP-UX is HP's brand of Unix.
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/9/98)
Casting an eye toward broadcasters who would like to add data services to conventional audio/video broadcasting, a startup named SkyStream (Mountain View, Calif.) will use the IBC '98 broadcasters' conference here this week to introduce a data-injection system that uses an industry-standard conditional-access system interface.
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/9/98)
Having established the PowerPC in lower-end networking systems, Motorola Inc. now hopes to push the chip into high-end switches and routers. Next week the company will launch a part that combines a PowerPC 603e core and a 32-bit RISC-based networking engine.
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/9/98)
Manufacturers of plasma display panels (PDPs) — items whose high price tags have hobbled their attempts to crack consumer markets — say they will have the economies in place to make a serious run for a PDP-TV market around the year 2000.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/9/98)
Industry observers were unanimously impressed with IBM's 1.0-inch disk drive — only 5.5-mm tall — to be unveiled next summer by the company's Storage Systems Division. But most were uncertain of when the targeted portable markets for this type of product will take off.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/9/98)
Matsushita Semiconductor Corp. of America (MASCA) will close its semiconductor manufacturing plant in Puyallup, Wash. this December, citing difficult market conditions and plunging DRAM prices.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/9/98)
Although built-in self-test (BIST) has become increasingly important for system-on-a-chip design, the technology still faces several challenges. Where does the rise of BIST leave automatic test-program generation (ATPG), for instance? Until now, many large chips — mainly ASICs, or at least the logic portions — have been tested through a combination of internal scan circuitry and ATPG. But the viability of full-scan ATPG for deep-submicron has come under attack in some quarters.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/9/98)
Convergence between cyberspace and the telephone network may be at hand. Several new standards efforts have sprung up in hopes of providing an interface between Internet Protocol (IP) switching-and-routing hardware and Signaling System 7, the digital intelligent switching protocol at the heart of conventional, circuit-switched telephony.
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/8/98)
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has developed a CMOS image sensor circuit with a built-in electronic shutter, providing the latest twist on active-pixel sensor design.
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/8/98)
PC OEMs seeking a flexible way to implement high-quality DVD are considering the software- and hardware-based digital video and audio solutions of Quadrant International (QI), the company said.
(9:00 p.m., EDT, 9/8/98)
New approaches to combining memory and logic for system-on-a-chip (SOC) designs will highlight the upcoming 44th International Electron Devices Meeting, scheduled for Dec. 6-9 in San Francisco. Merged processes that combine logic and memory structures, copper interconnects, silicon-on-insulator and new dielectric materials will be in the spotlight.
(3:00 p.m., EDT, 9/8/98)
C-Cube Microsystems has unveiled a single-chip codec that allows editing and transcoding between DV and MPEG video streams. The device, which will be shown at the International Broadcasting Conference here later this week, lets users of video editing machines or broadcast video servers transcode and edit digital video streams compressed in different formats entirely within the digital domain, on the same chip.
(2:00 p.m., EDT, 9/8/98)
Intel Corp. and a group of top PC makers are pushing the future of the PCI bus in different directions. A debate over PCI is now brewing in the arena of high-end PC servers, but promises to spill over into communications and embedded systems designs.
(10:00 p.m., EDT, 9/7/98)
Low-cost access to ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor technology is being launched by Atmel Corp. with the AT91M40400, the first member in a planned family of ARM7TDMI Thumb-based microcontrollers. Up to now, ARM RISC cores have been almost exclusively designed into custom chips for a customer's specialized application.
(10:00 p.m., EDT, 9/7/98)
Rockwell Semiconductor Systems is taking the wraps off what looks to be the first multichannel remote-access chip to use a RISC core from Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. for controlling three channels of digital and analog phone-line support. The AnyPort RL56CSMV/3, a 340-pin 3.3-V device, is the first in what will be a large family of central-site modems that Rockwell expects to roll out over the next three years.
(10:00 p.m., EDT, 9/7/98)
Lattice Semiconductor Corp. has introduced its largest complex programmable-logic device yet. The 8840 includes 840 macrocells and 312 programmable input and output capture registers.
(5:30 p.m., EDT, 9/4/98)
At a technical conference here next week, researchers from IBM Microelectronics will argue that silicon-germanium technology in a BiCMOS process sets new standards for reliability that gallium arsenide-based technology cannot match. IBM is set to follow up next week's technical argument with a number of SiGe product announcements before the year is out.
(5:30 p.m., EDT, 9/4/98)
China's nascent broadcast industry is looking for ways to boost its domestic TV, radio and cable equipment sectors as planners decide whether to adopt a U.S. or European digital-broadcast standard.
(5:30 p.m., EDT, 9/4/98)
n a small but potentially significant step toward tool interoperability, Cadence Design Systems Inc. has joined Synopsys Inc.'s Tap-in program and has become the first company to license the Synopsys Design Constraint (SDC) format.
(5:30 p.m., EDT, 9/4/98)
In the race to become the first company to offer a full line of silicon design tools, Cadence Design Systems Inc. reentered the ASIC logic-synthesis market by announcing that it will acquire Ambit Design Systems Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) for $260 million in cash — the largest amount ever paid by an EDA vendor for a privately held company.
(5:30 p.m., EDT, 9/4/98)
South Korean and Japanese semiconductor giants, gripped by the twin forces of the Asian financial crisis and the spindown in the DRAM market, have announced major operational upheavals that leave an industry in recession wondering what it will look like when the dust settles.
(5:30 p.m., EDT, 9/4/98)
Brent Townshend, the Quebec-based developer who worked on several core concepts for pulse-code modulated (PCM) modems, received several U.S. patents this week for that technology.
(5:30 p.m., EDT, 9/4/98)
The board of Information Storage Devices Inc. is continuing to discuss the company's possible acquisition by its foundry partner, Winbond Electronics Corp.
(5:30 p.m., EDT, 9/4/98)
Digital broadcast transmission technology demonstrated by the Advanced Television Technology Center (ATTC) here promises to deliver digital TV signals to remote areas, the Center said.
(5:30 p.m., EDT, 9/4/98)
Newbridge Networks Inc. signed a letter of intent on Thursday to acquire Castleton Network Systems Corp. (Vancouver, British Columbia), which develops voice-over-frame relay products.
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