IN THE NEWS Business and technology news from the semiconductor and design tool industries.

In the News

* Researchers at Texas Instruments, Inc. (Dallas) have demonstrated the successful combination of copper wiring with an insulating material called xerogel on an IC. The coupling of the two technologies allows electrical signals to flow more freely throughout the chip, reducing electrical resistance and capacitance effects. The approach will lead to future DSPs and microprocessors that are at least 10 times faster and use much less power than today's most powerful chips, TI says.

* Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products (Ieper, Belgium) and SGS-Thomson Microelectronics (Burlington, Mass.) signed a license agreement for speech recognition technology. SGS-Thomson is developing an embedded dedicated signal processor IC to run the L&H ASR200 speech recognition software in automotive, multimedia, and other electronic systems. The circuit will be used to develop speech applications, such as navigation systems, cellular phones, and instrumentation for vehicles, allowing hands-free control for improved road safety and user convenience.

* Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, Wash.) and Silicon Graphics, Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) are partnering to deliver a new 3D graphics device driver kit (DDK) for the Windows operating system that will allow graphics chip vendors and OEMs to create, certify, and distribute 3D graphics drivers based on Silicon Graphics' OpenGL graphics technology for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0, as well as the forthcoming Windows 98 and Windows NT 5.0 operating systems.

* Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (San Jose) and Ambit Design Systems, Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) have formed a multiyear business and technology relationship. The deal gives Cadence full access to Ambit's software for its design services and provides for a reseller agreement authorizing Cadence to offer current users of Synergy, Cadence's synthesis tool, a technology upgrade program to Ambit's Buildgates. Cadence will purchase Buildgates over a period of several quarters. In addition, the companies Ambit and Cadence will jointly develop and prequalify deep-submicron ASIC and custom IC design flows.

* In other news, Cadence will partner with Scottish Enterprise (Livingston, Scotland), an economic development organization, to establish Scotland as the world's premier location for electronics companies to design advanced system chips. The agreement will see Cadence locate its largest design center in Scotland--a planned campus of industrial and academic activity located on a 55-acre site in Livingston that will house more than 1,800 engineers by the year 2004. Cadence's participation is part of a broader initiative sponsored by Scottish Enterprise that combines government, industry, and academia to address the requirements of system-on-a-chip design.

* Opmaxx, Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.) and LTX Corp. (Westwood, Mass.) have teamed up to create a custom interface between Opmaxx's Testmaxx software and LTX's Synchro and Fusion test systems. The interface will be available in Q2.

* Meanwhile, LTX has received a multimillion dollar order from the Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology Center of Hitachi Ltd.'s Semiconductor and Integrated Circuit Division (Tokyo) for the Fusion system-on-a-chip tester and for multiple LTX Delta/STE testers. Hitachi will use the Delta/STEs for production testing of its most advanced RISC microcontrollers for PDAs. The Fusion system will be used for engineering analysis and characterization of Hitachi's SH-4 series of advanced microcontrollers.

* In-Stat (Scottsdale, Ariz.) reports that although the MOS SRAM aggregate ASP has already dropped approximately 27 percent from 1996 levels of $4.92, it appears to have bottomed out at $3.34. In-Stat forecasts that the ASP will rise to $4.02 in December 1997. The SRAM ASP degradation from 1996 will result in a 26 percent reduction in 1997 dollar revenues to $3.5 billion. According to In-Stat, the all-time high for unit shipments attained in 1995 will not be reached again until early 1999. Looking ahead to 2001, In-Stat predicts an annual growth rate of 3.3 percent for MOS SRAM dollar shipments, a 6.8 percent growth rate for unit shipments, and overall revenues of $5.5 billion.

* Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (San Jose) is opening a semiconductor design center in Ireland, located at the Bessboro Industrial Park, Mahon, Cork. The center will employ five design engineers to start and is scheduled to employ 55 within the next five years. It will produce designs for data communications products and will eventually expand to produce semicustom logic designs.

* Actel Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) has launched Guru, a 24-hour on-line technical support system that offers answers to frequently asked technical and design questions about Actel's FPGAs and FPGA design tools. It can be found on the Web at www.actel.com/illustra/Webdriver?MIval=GuruForm.

* A special interactive exhibit of the latest flat-panel display applications, called the Marketplace, will be highlighted at the Display Works '98 Exposition and Conference at the San Jose Convention Center, Jan. 21­22. The exhibit will showcase ways in which flat-panels displays are being integrated into end-user applications for the home entertainment, automotive, military, and industrial markets. Participating companies include Fujitsu , which will demonstrate home entertainment applications; Motorola , with in-seat airline video systems; Planar , with dashboard displays; Dpix , with advanced military displays; and Visual Environments , which will demonstrate holographic-style stereo image display technology. The exposition and conference are coproduced by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), the Society for Information Display (SID), and the U.S. Display Consortium (USDC).

* Xilinx, Inc. (San Jose) has had its quality processes certified by two key standards-setting organizations. The Defense Supply Center Columbus (DSCC; Columbus, Ohio) granted full Qualified Manufacturer Listing (QML) status to Xilinx as of Nov. 20. The qualification will allow Xilinx to bring new military-grade products to market faster. In addition, Xilinx expanded the scope of its ISO registration during November from ISO 9002 to ISO 9001.

* Futuretel, Inc. (Sunnyvale) has begun limited shipment of Video Sphinx Pro, an external PC peripheral for capturing and editing full-motion video, CD-quality audio, and high-resolution photos and stills.

* Dense-Pac Microsystems, Inc. (Garden Grove, Calif.) has received an initial $1.5 million annual order to supply Deskstation Technology with high-density 256-Mbyte SDRAM modules for the latter's Alpha-based servers.

Movers & Shakers

*Mostafa Torkian , formerly vice president of engineering for Synopsys , Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.), has joined Duet Technologies, Inc. (San Jose) as senior vice president of engineering. In his new role, Torkian will assume complete responsibility for technology development and design services and for expanding Duet's semiconductor design organization.

* Logicvision, Inc. (San Jose) has named Timothy Conley vice president of finance and CFO. Conley will report to president and CEO Vinod Agarwal.

* Tritech Microelectronics (Singapore and Milpitas, Calif.) has appointed Yeo Choon Tat CFO. He reports to Tritech's president, Keith Jackson , and will be based at the company's headquarters in Singapore. Previously, Yeo was vice president of investment in the Singapore office of Walden International Investment Group.

* Silicon Valley Research, Inc. named Robert Wong vice president of operations, a new position at the company. Previously, Wong was senior manager of corporate CAD/processor module development for Hal Computer Systems (Campbell, Calif.).

Money Bits

*Semtech Corp . (Newbury Park, Calif.) has declared a two-for-one stock split. The split will be in the form of a 100 percent stock dividend to shareholders of record as of Dec. 23. As a result of the stock split, approximately 14 million of Semtech's shares will be outstanding.

* The board of directors of Texas Instruments, Inc. (Dallas) declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.085 per share of common stock, payable Jan. 26, to stockholders of record Dec. 31. The dividend is equivalent to the $0.17 per share paid on Oct. 20, adjusted to reflect the two-for-one stock split, in the form of a 100 percent stock dividend, paid in November.

* The board of directors of Xilinx, Inc. (San Jose) has authorized a stock repurchase program whereby up to 2 million shares of its common stock may be purchased in the open market from time to time as market and business conditions warrant.

* Semicon Tools, Inc. (Armonk, N.Y.) realized the highest quarterly and nine-month net sales in its history. Net sales for the quarter ended Oct. 31 was $557,043, compared with $364,070 for the comparable period ended Oct. 31, 1996, an increase of approximately 53 percent.

Correction

Neither Speedsim nor its technology was developed or owned by Digitial Equipment Corp., as stated in the "Electronics Journal" supplement in the October issue ("Deep Submicron Drives a Shift in IC Design Methodology," p. 6), nor did Datquest's Gary Smith make the claim. Speedsim, Inc. developed its technology independently, before being acquired by Quickturn Design Systems, Inc. this past year. The only connection to DEC was that part of the original Speedsim team used to work there. *

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integrated system design  February 1998