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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, January 9, 1998Lithography advance cuts patterns below 0.1ýA process technology that cuts chip patterns to the fineness of a 0.04-micron isolated line has been established by a research consortium in Tokyo.
Sequent, Digital to put Unix on Intel's MercedIn a case of deja vu with a twist, the Unix wars are back, but this time they are being fought not across a variety of RISC processors but on an unreleased Intel Corp. CPU. Sequent Computer Systems Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.) said last week it will work with Digital Equipment Corp. to enhance and po rt the 64-bit Digital Unix to Intel's IA-64.
Startup hands switch control to Windows NTMembers of the Toshiba America Electronics/Digital Equipment Corp. team responsible for asynchronous-transfer-mode switching chips have formed a company to add a Microsoft twist to the Layer 3 switching stampede.
High-fliers brace for tough Q4With the bulk of fourth-quarter earnings arriving in the next two weeks, technology investors are bracing for some brutal news from last year's high-fliers. A combination of factors topped off by Asian economic instability has led to a raft of "pre-announcements," in which companies predicted their earnings would not match Wall Street estimates--or would not materialize at all.
Depreciation reform eyedWhen Congress reconvenes later this month, it will help determine how quickly the U.S. circu it-board industry adopts a number of new technologies. A bill that trims capital-equipment depreciation from five to three years may also help board fabricators and assemblers compete against Asian companies grappling with the problems in their economies.
Thursday, January 8, 1998OrCAD, MicroSim merger delayedThe OrCAD purchase of MicroSim Corp., expected to close Dec. 31, has been delayed for an unknown period of time due to "unsatisfied conditions." Although OrCAD officials denied comment beyond a tersely written press release, there appears to be some chance the merger won't happen.
Chromatic realigns executives to address bottom lineChromatic Research Inc., considered one of the pioneers in media processors, has realigned its executive management team in an effort bring the company into the black. Meanwhile, Chromatic continues to look for ways to persuade PC manufacturers to buy into using its "Swiss Army knife" co-processor to handle multimedia applications.
Speech software can learn in noiseSensory Inc. is introducing an industrial-strength version of its Sensory Speech software, which interfaces its speech-recognition chip set with its brain-emulating neural-network algorithms. Ruggedized for noisy, error-prone environments, Sensory Speech 3.0 learns voice commands by listening to about 400 different users' voice samples from the environment in which the device will be deployed.
CoWare brings codesign out of lab and into marketBringing new EDA technology to market is never easy. But the people at CoWare Inc. feel the time is right for a new design methodology based on advanced hardware/software-codesign research.
Latest 14-, 16-bit A/D converters balance resolution, spee d, powerAnalog-to-digital converters once forced designers to choose between resolution and speed. Now, analog chip makers routinely offer 14- and 16-bit devices with fast sampling rates. The new challenges are low power, multiple channels--and faster speeds for jobs in video and communications.
Patent fight over cholesteric-LCD tech rages onTwo companies are preparing to duke it out once again in a bitter dispute over cholesteric-LCD technology that kicked off in mid-1995. Kent Display Systems (Kent, Ohio) claims that American Display Systems (ADS; Amarillo, Texas) infringed on its C-LCD patent, licensed from Kent State University. From that initial assertion has come a flurry of charges and countercharges.
Wednesday, January 7, 1998Crawford leaves Lucent for ZilogCurtis Crawford is leaving his position as president of Lucent Technologies Inc.'s microelec tronics group to take the helm of chip maker Zilog Inc. (Campbell, Calif.), the companies announced today.
Siemens and Motorola to share 300-mm pilot lineDetails of a Siemens and Motorola collaboration to develop semiconductor process technology for 300-mm silicon wafers will be announced Jan. 12. The companies plan to share a 300-mm pilot line that will be installed at an existing Siemens wafer fab here.
TI takes salicide process into deep-submicronA variation of the standard self-aligned silicide (salicide) process, commonly used to make 0.25-micron CMOS circuits, has allowed Texas Instruments Inc. researchers to push the technology down to unprecedented 0.06-micron dimensions.
Rules rewritten for lithoA new approach to creating antireflection coatings on silicon chips could help extend optical lithography to sub-0.1-m icron design rules. Devised at Texas Instrument's Semiconductor Process and Design Center here, the coatings have been used to create transistors with 0.06-micron gates using deep-ultraviolet lithographic equipment.
Phone taps speech-recognition chipSensory Inc. reached a milestone in low-end speech recognition at last week's Consumer Electronics Show, as Uniden America Corp. announced it was using the Sunnyvale company's RSC-164 single-chip speech-recognition controller in the EXV98 VoiceDial phone. The phone uses proprietary neural-network algorithms stored in the RSC-164 to automate dialing for up to 30 names that the user speaks into the microphone.
LeCroy digital scopes upgrade processor/RAMEight new digital oscilloscopes, with varying bandwidths, channel counts and memory lengths, form the new C series from LeCroy Corp. Each member of the line carries a new, faster process or, additional RAM, an improved I/O system and a new GPIB chip. A floppy drive is standard on all models.
Board makers make fine-pitch for the futureThe rapidly changing face of electronic packaging was brought into clearer focus at the Technology Marketing Research Council meeting here last month. Presentations spotlighted the coming changes as densities skyrocket and attempted to provide some guidance for the manufacturers who have to match their production lines to the fine-pitch technologies that will be needed.
Tuesday, January 6, 1998Crawford leaves Lucent for ZilogCurtis Crawford is leaving his position as president of Lucent Technologies Inc.'s microelectronics group to take the helm of chip maker Zilog Inc. (Campbell, Calif.), the companies announced today.
IEEE 1394 draws a real-time nodWhi le IEEE 1394 may be getting off to a slow start as a peripherals bus for multimedia PCs, it's spawning some interesting activity in other venues. Recently, Sederta Inc., based here, announced a deterministic 1394-based scheme for synchronizing multiple independent computer systems, about two months after NEC Corp. announced a 1394-based LAN for the home.
Broadcom QAM chips, Cisco software power Samsung cable modemSamsung Electronics Inc.'s new multimedia technology center has introduced a residential networking product for Internet access. The Samsung InfoLink Cable Modem, based on the Data-Over-Cable System Interface Spec (DOCSIS) promoted by CableLabs, uses the Broadcom Corp. quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) physical- and MAC-layer chip set, and the Internetwork Operating System software from Cisco Systems Inc.
Cypress offers clock chips for Pentium CPUsCypress Semicondu ctor Corp. has launched the CY227x family of clock-synthesis and generator chips, intended for Pentium II, AMD K6 and Cyrix 6x86 processors. The chips integrate up to three phase-locked loops and support advanced PC features such as Universal Serial Bus and synchronous DRAMs.
AMD rolls out wireless-LAN firmwareAdvanced Micro Devices Inc. can claim to have a full solution for IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs now, bundling firmware for both clients and access points along with its 79C930 medium-access control chip, which is now in full production. AMD is providing a full suite of firmware binaries free of charge with the MAC device.
New Vero cases screen boards from EMI/RFIVero Electronics has tailored a new line of cases for applications that need high levels of shielding from electromagnetic and radio-frequency interference, such as telecommunications, process control and medical equipment.
Monday, January 5, 1998Avant! bets its future on launch of Apollo place-and-route toolClaiming to offer the most complete physical-design system for ICs built at 0.25 micron and below, Avant! Corp. this week will unveil its Apollo placement-and-routing tool and several companion products. With this move, Avant! hopes to both overcome its legal problems with Cadence Design Systems Inc. and close a design-tool gap that threatens the move to very deep-submicron processes.
Embedded nets get integrated solutionOsicom Technologies Inc., a networking OEM, will boldly challenge embedded computing's giant architectures, such as Motorola Inc.'s ColdFire and PowerPC, with this week's introduction of a family of chip sets for networked embedded applications.
Single company tackles transoceanic cable jobsGloba l Telesystems Ltd. is out to prove skeptics wrong by showing that a single company working with a cabling contractor can beat the most aggressive schedules of telecommunications consortia in deploying an advanced fiber-optic underseas cable.
Altera recruits synthesis allies for future PLDsAltera Corp. has entered into separate strategic alliances with Synplicity Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Exemplar Logic Inc. (Alameda, Calif.). The aim is to tightly integrate each company's synthesis software with Altera's Max+Plus II programmable-logic tools suite for use with Altera's next-generation million-gate devices.
VLSI's data-security IC finds spot in DVD playerVLSI Technology Inc. is carving out what it sees as an important niche for its security chip in consumer-electronics products. The San Jose-based company will announce today that the chip, built around an ARM RISC processor, h as been designed into the Divx DVD player from Matsushita, Thomson and LG Zenith.
U.S. eyes 30-Tflops computer by 2001The U.S. Department of Energy this month will kick off a strategic effort aimed at realizing by the year 2001 a 30-teraflops supercomputer--fully 10 times the performance of the highest-powered existing systems.
It's clash of titans as DTV kickoff nearsThe opening of the International Consumer Electronics Show this week will mark the first public appearance of one of the most controversial and misunderstood technologies yet to intrude into the living room: high-definition TV.
Off-the-shelf design cuts cost of moon missionWhen the first dedicated mission to the moon in a quarter-century gets under way late this week, it will mark the space program's first foray into a region as unfamilia r to NASA as the moon's dark side: the commercial electronics industry.
IGS bets big on TV-out-capable graphics chipsIGS Technologies plans to offer two new families of graphics chips with TV-out capabilities early this year. The announcement comes as OEMs craft designs for next-generation TV set-top boxes for the home and PC companies explore ways of providing TV output as a standard feature.
Reference board targets VIA designSarnoff Corp. has developed an early independent reference design for network interfaces compliant with the Virtual Interface Architecture (VIA). The Memory-Integrated Network Interface (Mini) board design centers on asynchronous-transfer-mode interfaces and takes novel directions in its memory-access architecture.
Software forensics expert takes a byte out of crimeThere was the guy who stole some softw are and stripped out all the block comments but left the code unchanged in every other respect. He got caught. Then there was the guy who did an "amazingly thorough" job of rewriting some stolen code--but neglected to delete the original copyright messages.
Analog Devices ups ante for digital-camera components at CESAnalog Devices Inc. hopes to raise its profile in the burgeoning market for digital-camera components by unveiling a low-power CCD signal-conditioning circuit. The CMOS integrated device operates from a 3-V supply and its power consumption (185 mW) is said to be a fraction of that needed by the multichip devices this application now uses.
Rival data formats vie for digital-camera futureSetting the stage for a major battle over digital-still-camera data formats, 20 manufacturers--led by Canon--have proposed a new way to store and manage digital images inside a ca mera. Their proposal is incompatible with the format used by giants Fuji Film and Eastman Kodak.
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