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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, February 13, 1998Superscalar and VLIW architectures face off in the DSP world(3:00 p.m. EST, 2/13/98)Echoing the coming rivalry between superscalar and very long-instruction-word architectures in the workstation world, startup ZSP Corp. announced a superscalar DSP chip last week that will face Texas Instruments Inc.'s VLIW C6X family in the wireless-basestation market. The two architectures will contend not just on performance but on a range of issues vital to embedded-systems designers.
Linfinity proposes new standard for gauging amplifier efficiency(3:00 p.m. EST, 2/13/98)Linfinity Corp., a manufacturer of power-management ICs, has proposed a new standard for measuring the efficiency of power amplifiers and speakers-especially those used in portable computers and desktop multimedia systems.
Deals propel exotic processes into the wireless mainstream(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/12/98)Two alliances announced this week could propel process technologies once considered exotic into the mainstream of communications design. The separate deals signal significant next steps toward the goal of developing integrated analog RF and digital baseband devices.
Panel winnows digital-radio candidates(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/12/98)An industry group that has been testing digital-audio radio (DAR) systems for six years has eliminated all but one candidate system in a report to reg ulators.
Thursday, February 12, 1998Intel's i740 departs from the norm to improve 3-D image quality(3:00 p.m. EST, 2/12/98)With the introduction of its long-awaited i740 graphics processor, Intel Corp. has taken some bold steps in moving to a new, fine-grained 3-D rendering process and is making a clean break from the use of local memory for executing texture-map data. The moves have stirred debate in the graphics industry over how to achieve better image quality and exploit the bandwidth of the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP).
Japan sets broadcast-satellite digital-TV standards(3:00 p.m. EST, 2/12/98)Japan has nailed down standards for the delivery of digital TV via broadcast satellite,specifying six video formats with MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). Service is expected to start in Japan around the year 2000.
More planning, silicon support required for Gigabit Ethernet(3:00 p.m. EST, 2/12/98)The Gigabit Ethernet community received a three-month breather when IEEE 802.3z announced a delay in its work this week. This should help both OEMs and chip-set developers to prepare for a market that is becoming more complex than a simple exponential upgrade of full-duplex Fast Ethernet backbones. Attendees at the Gigabit Ethernet Conference at the Wyndham Hotel in San Jose this week heard from several executives who analyzed a market that is showing almost as much complexity as the asynchronous transfer mode LAN market it is displacing.
Hitachi bows out of DRAM venture with TI(3:00 p.m. EST, 2/12/98)Texas Instruments Inc. and Hitachi Ltd. will terminate their DRAM production project at Twinstar Semiconductor Inc., their joint-venture company in Richardson, Texas. TI will take over the facility by the end of the first quarter this year.
IFR Systems buys GEC's Marconi unit(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/11/98)IFR Systems Inc. has acquired Marconi Instruments Ltd. (Hertfordshire, England) and Marconi Instruments Inc. (Fort Worth, Texas) from The General Electric Co. plc (GEC, London), for approximately $107 million in cash.
Sun taps fast Schlumberger ATE for next-generation ASICs(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/11/98)Sun Microsystems Inc. has taken delivery of a number of 400-MHz, 768-pin ITS 9000IX test systems from Schlumberger Ltd.'s Measurement & Systems division. Sun will use the systems to test next-generation ASICs and Sparc processors for future workstations and servers. The machines are among the few able to support the speed, the 150-ps accuracy and the pin count of next-generation chips; Schlumberger said they are the only test systems that can fill that role.
IP requires upgrade to handle multicast traffic(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/11/98)Internet-tool executives have come to the IP Multicast Summit with a unified message: Upgrading infrastructure for multicast Internet Protocol traffic may be bothersome and costly, but the consequences of not doing so will be an assured backbone meltdown within the next decade.
M/A-Com seeds market for 5.2-GHz wireless LAN(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/11/98)While standards for a 5.2-GHz wireless LAN are still being hammered out, M/A-Com (Lowell, Mass.) has quietly begun sampling an integrated transceiver module to seed development work in this emerging market. Vendors have shipped 2.4-GHz wireless LANs for several years, mainly to a fairly small market of vertical niches in the industrial sector, but the potential of greater bandwidth for the wide slice of spectrum available around 5.2 GHz is raising hopes for a broader market for this technology.
Drafters prepare 'cleaned up' spec for USB(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/11/98)The Universal Serial Bus is about to get a spring cleaning. A USB 1.1 specification is in the works, aimed at making this 12-Mbit-per-second connection for computer and consumer-electronic devices more robust and mature.
Japanese vendors boost digital-camera specs(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/11/98)Digital cameras will have enhanced media compatibility thanks to a collaborative effort by Japanese camera makers to nail down details of the so-called Exif specifications.
Wednesday, February 11, 1998Equipment makers mull financing for Korean customers(3:00 p.m. EST, 2/11/98)Faced with a major customer base that's been crippled by a financial crisis, semiconductor-equipment companies are mulling the option of financing South Korea's equipment orders themselves. Industry executives met at the headquarters of the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) here recently to hear banking and leasing-company officials present programs that could help Korean IC makers continue to buy capital equipment.
Recent GaAs announcements turn on negative rails(3:00 p.m. EST, 2/11/98)If they can't have an integrated RF front end, cellular-handset designers are willing to settle for an integrated power amplifier that is easy to drive, power efficient and cheap. Because of its power efficiency at very high frequencies, gallium arsenide (GaAs) has become the process of choice for RF transmitters and receivers. But announcements by GaAs leaders at the Wireless Symposium here suggest that "small, fast and cheap" won't come easily.
Market to welcome '98 EE and computer-science grads with open arms(3:00 p.m. EST, 2/11/98)In a way, the college recruitment picture for 1998 graduates is monotonous. Most companies are hiring. Salaries are up. The job-market pendulum swings in favor of the EE and computer-science graduate.
Co-op program bridges the academia-workplace gap(3:00 p.m. EST, 2/11/98)Though it isn't listed in college catalogs along with the content of courses on digital circuit design or software development, it is what students want most from such classes: relevance. Will they have a chance to apply the knowledge they gain from the courses?
Study gives Gigabit Ethernet an edge over ATM(3:00 p.m. EST, 2/11/98)Gigabit Ethernet technology is poised to challenge established networking technologies such as asynchronous transfer mode during the next three years, and could even invade the corporate backbone, which has long been considered ATM's strongest refuge, according to a new market study by Multimedia Research Group Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.).
Corrigan, DeGeus to keynote IP'98(3:00 p.m. EST, 2/11/98)Keynote speakers have been announced for the Intellectual Property in Electronics (IP '98) conference, scheduled for March 23-34 in Santa Clara, Calif. They are Aart de Geus, president and chief executive officer of Synopsys Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.); Wilfred Corrigan, chief executive officer of LSI Logic Corp. (Milpitas, Calif.); and Bob Downes, director of Scottish business for Scottish Enterprise.
Motorola rolls complementary GaAs process for satellite applications(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/10/98)Motorola Inc.'s Semiconductor Products Sector (Phoenix) has revealed details of a complementary gallium arsenide (CGaAs) process that could be useful for digital logi c in satellite data-download applications. The process is said to offer higher switch times and lower power consumption than CMOS, as well as radiation protection. The company announced the process at the Wireless and Portable Symposium this week.
Hitachi shows 128-Mbit single-electron memory(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/10/98)Hitachi Ltd. has taken the development of single-electron memories a giant step forward with the fabrication of a 128-Mbit device built with a commercial 0.25-micron CMOS process.
Synopsys tips hand on design-planning software(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/10/98)Synopsys Inc. has signaled its intent to compete in the IC design-planning market by announcing its shipment of design-planning software to SGS-Thomson Microelectronics and Toshiba Corp. The software is not yet an announced product, and stems from a partnership that Synopsys announced with IBM in February 1996.
Study bullish on LMDS(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/10/98)Local multipoint distribution services (LMDS) could compete with existing transmission services and grow to a $1 billion business over the next decade, according to an economic study by Bellcore of the new wireless service.
U.S. launches 'PathForward' supercomputer project(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/10/98)The U.S. Department of Energy has officially launched its billion-dollar effort to build a 30-teraflops supercomputer with the announcement of the first contracts under the agency's PathForward project.
Ikos forms emulation partnership(9:00 p.m. EST, 2/10/98)Ikos Systems Inc., a provider of design-verification software, is prepared to announce a marketing partnership with Logic Innovations Inc. (San Diego) that will take Ikos' VirtuaLogic emulation systems into the vector-acceleration market, a new domain for the company. Ikos has also announced specialized emulation products for multimedia and PCI-based designs.
Tuesday, February 10, 1998Is local multipoint distribution service a wireless wonder or a broadband bust?(2:00 p.m. EST, 2/10/98)Two-way multichannel data, video and telephony for everybody, no strings-or wires or cables-attached. In a nutshell, that's what local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) systems are supposed to represent. The United States will be well along the road to this vision of broadband heaven when the Federal Communications Commission this Wednesday auctions off over 1,000 MHz of the airwaves set aside specifically for LMDS services.
Biometric sensors set to roll(2:00 p.m. EST, 2/10/98)System-design engineers looking for a more cost-effective way to incorporate security features into PCs and cellular phones now have the option of using IC-based fingerprint sensors. Riding the wave of growing interest in security in a society that is becoming increasingly digitized, silicon vendors hope to take their first generation of biometric sensing technology to the masses this year.
Tao's object-oriented operating system seeks to enhance Java for embedded apps(2:00 p.m. EST, 2/10/98)After eight years of development work, Tao Systems Ltd. has launched Elate, its object-oriented operating system and run-time environment. Francis Charig, chairman and chief executive officer of the 40-person company, said Elate will deliver higher-performance mobile phones, and other portable and set-top multimedia devices while reducing development costs and time-to-market. Elate is an updating of a 1994 introduction called Taos, which has now been aimed at embedded multimedia applications.
Intel bets on custom cache SRAM for Slot 2 platform(2:00 p.m. EST, 2/10/98)Intel Corp. has staked the success of its next-generation platform for the Pentium II processor on a semi-synchronous device that will run at the same speed as the processor. Unlike the pipelined-burst synchronous L2 cache SRAMs used for current Pentium II processors, Intel will manufacture the new SRAMs in-house for the life of the so-called Slot 2 high-end platform, company officials said Friday.
Mentor, HP collaborate on layout tools for RF design(6:00 p.m. EST, 2/9/98)To improve the utility of its printed-circuit-board layout tools, Mentor Graphics Corp. is partnering with HP EEsof (Santa Rose, Calif.) on layout tools that support RF design. The partnership will be revealed this week at the Wireless Symposium in Santa Clara, Calif.
Corrigan, Harding to keynote HDL conference(6:00 p.m. EST, 2/9/98)Keynote speakers have been announced for the International Hardware Description Language (HDL) conference , which is a combination of the former International Verilog Conference and the VHDL International User's Group. Luncheon keynote addresses will be presented by Wilfred J. Corrigan, chief executive officer of LSI Logic Corp. (Milpitas, Calif.), and Jack Harding, president and chief executive officer of Cadence Design Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).
Mobile terminals to be more like phones than PCs, panel says(6:00 p.m. EST, 2/9/98)Industry and academic representatives made a "mobile multimedia" wish list and described the kind of device that would best deliver it at "LSI Solutions and Enabling Technologies for Mobile Multimedia Devices in the Year 2002," a Friday night panel session at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Basing their ideas mainly on the Palm Pilot handheld computer, panelists took shots at various technologies and said how they will have to improve to produce such a device.
Performance, not power issues, drive chip architects(6:00 p.m. EST, 2/9/98)"Yes!" was the answer from a panel at last week's International Solid-State Circuits Conference. But despite the power limits, the panel agreed that maximizing performance remains the primary goal of microprocessor design teams.
Analog, digital designers won't get past holding hands(6:00 p.m. EST, 2/9/98)Conflicting opinions on the best way to integrate analog circuitry on the same chip with digital circuitry-and whether that integration is desirable-formed the basis of a spirited panel discussion at last week's International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).
Texas Instruments hints at tomorrow's media processor(6:00 p.m. EST, 2/9/98)A senior executive from Texas Instruments Inc. strongly hinted to an audience at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference that his company is interested in pursuing a fully programmable, VLIW media signal processor that would serve as a gateway for media streams through a television. Separately, Chromatic Research Inc., a developer of media processors, said it is now providing software-development kits for its Mpact-2 device.
Monday, February 9, 1998Matsushita and Sony plan single-chip MPEG-2 encoders(11:45 p.m. EST, 2/6/98)Sony Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. appear to have a jump on developing low-power, smaller die-size, single-chip MPEG-2 encoder ICs.
Hitachi keynoter hints at pass-transistor synthesis(11:45 p.m. EST, 2/6/ 98)In his keynote speech on multimegabit networks at the International Solid State Circuits Conference here, Michiharu Nakamura, general manager of Hitachi Central Research Laboratories (Tokyo), said his company was researching the addition of synthesis and optimization to its LEAP technology as a way to improve area and power consumption in ICs.
Europeans lukewarm on splitterless(11:45 p.m. EST, 2/6/98)While every major American telco has announced support for Universal ADSL, their European counterparts are frankly ambivalent, said Vincent Roland, vice president of marketing at Alcatel Microelectronics (Brussels, Belgium). Alcatel was among more than a dozen semiconductor makers announcing support for the splitterless version of asymmetric digital subscriber line. European telcos expect too many service problems, said Roland, in an interview at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) here.
Digital grants Samsung Alpha rights(11:45 p.m. EST, 2/6/98)Digital Equipment Corp. has granted a full architecture license for the Alpha microprocessor architecture to Samsung of Korea, sources told EE Times. Under the new license, Samsung will have access to all future architectural advances DEC makes on Alpha, and will also have the right to do its own implementations of Alpha for specific markets.
Sun set to release long-delayed EmbeddedJava spec(11:45 p.m. EST, 2/6/98)Six months after its expected release, the long-delayed EmbeddedJava specification from Sun Microsystems Inc. will finally be unveiled at the end of March, EE Times has learned.
U.S. Olympians 'wired' to win Winter Games(11:45 p.m. EST, 2/6/98)Heartbeat: 180, finger curled around the trigger, breath coming fast. Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Five small -bore rounds precisely shot off between breaths, precisely timed to synchronize with the trailing edge of a heartbeat. Five targets down.
MPEG-4 close to multimedia market debut(11:45 p.m. EST, 2/6/98)MPEG-4, the algorithm-agnostic wavelet compression technology geared toward the next-generation of interactive multimeida applications, is poised to move from concept to concrete specification, backed by working silicon.
FPGA gets designed into standard IC(11:45 p.m. EST, 2/6/98)With complex cores playing a growing role in programmable designs, chip giants Motorola and Lucent Technologies are poised to expand the spectrum of available choices for delivering field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).
ITU approves PCM standard as V.90(11:45 p.m. EST, 2/6/98)The International Telecommunications Union formally approved the Study Group 16's draft for an asymmetric Pulse Code Modulated analog modem standard on Friday. Designated V.90, it capped a rapid effort that finished a standard within 11 months of its submission to ITU. The standard includes a modem architecture for the analog end of a subscriber line, as well as a digital modem architecture for the central-office side, reflecting the fact that this modem must be used with digitally terminated lines at a carrier's central office.
1-Gbit DRAM project delayed(11:45 p.m. EST, 2/6/98)Hitachi Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Group and Texas Instruments Inc. have delayed for about one year their cooperative research project aimed at building a 1-Gbit DRAM. A Mitsubishi spokesman blamed the slowdown on current turmoil in the semiconductor market, which has seen DRAM prices fall steadily for the past year, and on economic restructuring in Asia, which has sapped profits.
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