EET-i Top of the News
Week of September 18, 1995
- September 21, 1995
 Internet's growth pushing it from free to fee
- Taiwan: fab capacity OK
- EDA startup brings VHDL simulation to Windows
- Methode makes move to multimedia
- IEEE taps member for GM post
- AMD, Fujitsu, planning new flash-memory fab
- FCC panel rejects COFDM for TV
What's new(s) at EE Times-interactive
- September 20, 1995
- TI develops dense gate-array architecture
- Dıtente comes to systems engineering
- A/D design combines techniques
- Neural trackball 'eyes' less maintenance
- Design house joins EDA fray
- Dozen tech firms make list of best employers for moms
- September 19, 1995
- Hole poked in Netscape security is being plugged
- IEEE, NIST closer to sensor standard
- VHDL verification tool debuts
- 'Sparcs' fly in high-end workstation race
- Level One to launch unique Ethernet hub repeater
- VLSI Tech aims demuxer at digital set top
- 8-, 16-bit MCUs the stars at Embedded Systems Conference
- September 18, 1995
- DVD standard war averted, thanks to IBM
- NEC signs with ARM for 'Thumb'
- Pinn
acles, the IC document exchange group, opens membership
- Maturation in evidence at embedded confab
- Intel takes on MPEG with wavelet-based Indeo
- EuroDAC rollouts show shift to Windows
- LSI readies 0.35-micron ASIC process
- Interop: Chip makers focus on SAR to cut costs of ATM
Other news sources on Techweb:
 Internet's growth pushing it from free to fee
By
George Leopold
WASHINGTON -- With the Internet as infobahn becoming orthodoxy, network developers, content providers and federal regulators are struggling to forge an economic model that yields profits without compromising the World Wide Web's free spirit.
The prospect of profitable commerce, once secure transactions are assured, is turning the laissez-faire model of the Internet on its ear, industry and government observers warned at the Networked Economy conference here.
"The Internet has been spared the difficulties of the access-charge scheme," Federal Communications Commission chairman Reed Hundt told a conference audience. "If i
t grows to a certain level, this exception . . . swallows the rule [of regulating networks]. So what do we do?"
FCC officials said they are quietly exploring the issue of how a regulatory framework will evolve as multimedia services such as voice, video and even radio begin to appear on the Internet--which passed the 100,000-domain mark last week, according to the Internet Society. "If you're going to ride, you have to pay," a commission official stressed.
In further evidence of the winds of change buffeting the Web, the National Science Foundation (NSF), which assigns domain names, announced that, beginning this week, businesses and private groups with Internet addresses will have to pay an annual administrative fee of $50. The move was prompted by NSF's inability to keep up with the rising administrative costs of registering addresses, which are being added at a rate of 20,000 a month.
Taiwan: fa
b capacity OK
By Mark Carroll
HSINCHU, Taiwan -- Taiwanese semiconductor executives are trying to calm fears that energy and labor shortages will stall the country's huge growth in capacity.
Those fears emerged recently when United Microelectronics Co. (UMC) announced plans for yet another joint-venture fab here, which raised to 18 the number of recently opened or planned fabs in Taiwan.
Most of the new fabs are planned for Science Park here, which already is suffering from a shortage of skilled production personnel and power.
But UMC's Andy Chang, project manager to the president, assured potential customers that since UMC is Taiwan's first semiconductor company, its reputation will insure an adequate supply of labor. He also said that Taiwan's government has insured the Taiwanese fabs of adequate power in the coming years.
EDA startup brings VHDL simulation to Windows
By
Richard Goering
REDMOND, Wash. -- A new EDA company founded by consultant and author David Pellerin is preparing to release its first product, a low-cost VHDL simulator available on Windows platforms. The company, Accolade Design Automation, is attempting to spread the use of HDLs through education and inexpensive tools.
"The mission of Accolade is really to bring advanced HDL design to mainstream engineers, who have been denied this technology for years," said Pellerin. He added that Accolade will focus on easy-to-use software supplemented with comprehensive training materials.
The company's first product is the Accolade VHDL Simulator, a 32-bit, direct-compiled simulator using technology developed by Green Mountain Computing Systems (Ryegate, Vt.). An educational version of this simulator is available on the Internet. Accolade's version, which will sell for under $1,000, adds a proprietary user interface and support for Object Linking and Embedding (O
LE 2.0).
Methode makes move to multimedia
By
Terry Costlow
CHICAGO -- Connector maker Methode Electronics Inc. is expanding into a new area, rolling out a graphics board that lets users display multimedia presentations on television sets, including large-screen TVs. The card leverages the company's technical strengths, but moves it into new markets.
"We're finally making a finished end assembly instead of something that goes into a component, or a subassembly that goes into a product," said Frank Samela, director of R&D at Methode's Datamate Division. "It's different from our normal components and connectors, but it's an extension of a few things. Part of what we call smart connectors consists of putting circuitry on a small board inside a connector."
The new board, the ME1000, is much larger, fitting in a standard IBM-compatible slot. I
t converts graphics, CAD, multimedia and other computer output to the NTSC format needed for televisions or VCRs. While most people think of multimedia presentations as business or marketing tools, Methode believes that designers will find the tool useful.
"We're looking at 3-D CAD people working in the high end," said John Zatler, general manager of Datamate. "People doing rendering and modeling are always constrained in the size image they can display. Once they put artwork into the computer, they're not able to get it out on anything larger than a monitor."
IEEE taps member for GM post
By
Robert Bellinger
PISCATAWAY, N.J. -- The IEEE has selected a member as its next general manager. Daniel J. Senese, vice president of quality at Bellcore, next week takes over the IEEE's top-paid staff position, which has been vacant since the resignation
of John Powers in November.
Senese's background in leading a companywide quality-improvement program at Bellcore could prove useful at the IEEE, which has run into snags with its customer-service information-technology system. The snarls in processing renewals, in deliveries of its Spectrum magazine and other services have emerged as an issue in this year's presidential race.
"For the initial period, Mr. Senese will work closely with our acting general manager, Richard Schwartz, to ensure a smooth transition," said IEEE president Tom Cain. Schwartz will resume his prior responsibilities as staff executive for business administration.
AMD, Fujitsu, planning new flash-memory fab
By
Brian Fuller
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is negotiating with Fujitsu Ltd. to build a second fab dedicated to flash-memory production, complemen
ting the two companies' joint-venture flash fab now ramping at Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan.
AMD flash-product marketing manager Patrick Henry, in an interview this week, said the additional capacity is needed to meet the huge demand for flash memory. That demand already is taxing the resources of the year-old, 8-inch plant at Wakamatsu, designated FASL, for Fujitsu-AMD Semiconductor Ltd.
"We clearly see a need" for a second flash-dedicated fab, Henry said. "We'd need to get it under way as soon as possible."
Henry declined to say where the fab might be located and emphasized that the plans are only in the preliminary discussion stages. Such a facility probably wouldn't come on-line until late 1997 or 1998 at the earliest, he said.
FCC panel rejects COFDM for TV
WASHINGTON -- A federal advisory panel on advanced TV has rejected an alternative modulation technique favored by some broadcasters an
d European manufacturers, removing another obstacle to recommending a digital-TV standard to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in late November.
The FCC Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Services this year agreed to test the alternative, called coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (COFDM), to determine whether it is "demonstrably superior" to the HDTV Grand Alliance's vestigal sideband (8-VSB) modem. However, an experts group created by the advisory panel to study the issue concluded recently that proponents "did not demonstrate the superiority of COFDM over VSB for the majority of markets."
TI develops dense gate-array architecture
By Gail Robinson
DALLAS -- Researchers at Texas Instruments' Semiconductor Process and Device Center here have developed a gate-array architecture that replaces the popular NAND base cells with multiplexers. The architecture offe
rs several advantages, including a denser cell layout that will take gate-array technology well beyond the million-gate level, according to Robert Landers, one of the TI designers. The approach also offers lower power dissipation and simplified interconnection schemes.
"In a gate-array environment, the standard NAND base cell creates a basic problem with hooking up combinational logic," Landers said. "It can look like spaghetti--we have to do quite a bit of wiring because the transistors are not laid out conveniently for some of the more-complex-logic types." Even common logic elements such as MUXes and flip-flops can take an inordinate amount of wiring. By switching to a multiplexer-based cell, these very common, simpler functions can be directly wired and the cells have also proven to be flexible in implementing more-complex logic, Landers said.
Dıtente comes to systems engineering
By
Chappell Brown
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A style of systems engineering spawned by large Cold War military projects has spawned allies where it once found antagonists. In a deal initially valued at $5 million, domestic systems-engineering house Ascent Logic Corp. and Moscow-based "software factory" Transcontinental Systems Development have agreed to cross license and jointly develop systems-engineering products.
"We are being a bit conservative in calling it a $5 million agreement; we expect it to quickly grow beyond that," said Ascent president Larry McArthur.
The systems-engineering approach is finding wide application in the corporate world and represents one of the more successful examples of defense-technology conversion, McArthur said. "Automobile manufacturers, banks, and ambitious aerospace projects such as Motorola's Iridium satellite system are benefiting from the systems-engineering approach," he said. Systems engineering starts with requirements analysis
--a comprehensive analysis of a corporation or project--and then proceeds to simulate the resulting system on a computer. "One thing you always find at this stage is a long list of unimplemented requirements that the MIS group was never able to get to," he explained. "So this process gets a jump on the old system by including these in the new design."
A/D design combines techniques
By Gail Robinson
URBANA, Ill. -- By combining two techniques needed to calibrate digital multistep or pipelined converters, researchers have designed a 5-V, 13-bit, analog-to-digital (A/D) converter capable of 10 Msamples/second. The converter could play an important role in future wireless-communications systems.
Engineers at the University of Illinois here and Harris Corp. (Palm Bay, Fla.) have joined forces to focus on applying an all-digital self-calibration technique that subtracts errors in the digital d
omain to multistep and pipelined converters. The D/A converter code errors are measured in the background using a real-time oversampling calibrator updated constantly. The second technique focuses on a gain error that results from capacitor mismatch, which is measured in the foreground and proportionally distributed over the full conversion range.
"Until recently, researchers have been trying to integrate high-speed, high-definition A/D converters on the same silicon chip," said Bang-Sup Song, a University of Illinois researcher. "So far, this combination of speed and accuracy has only been achieved with hybrid designs, where you have an ECL chip and an external, very precise passive component."
Neural trackball 'eyes' less maintenance
By
R. Colin Johnson
FREMONT, Calif. -- Logitech Inc. has harnessed neural networks in a novel design for a
thumb-operated trackball. With its embedded sensor chip modeled on the neural networks of the human retina, the TrackMan Marble is said to eliminate the most common sources of trackball failure while enhancing resolution and reliability.
"Our neural-based electronic sensing technology tracks the ball displacement for virtually maintenance-free operation," Logitech software engineer Eric Raeber said.
Conventional trackball technology uses many moving parts--such as rollers, shafts and wheels--that can degrade performance when contaminated over time by dust particles, oils or chemicals from the user's skin. The TrackMan Marble is said virtually to eliminate tracking problems caused by user-introduced contamination.
"We can maintain accuracy under a variety of adverse conditions," said Raeber. "In fact, when we demo it, we pour coffee and other contaminants on the TrackMan Marble."
Design house join
s EDA fray
By
Peter Clarke
BRIGHTON, England -- Longtime design house Integrated Silicon Systems Ltd. (ISS; Belfast, Northern Ireland) made its debut as a design-automation vendor this week, showing a family of libraries at the EuroDAC show here.
ISS launched a set of hierarchical parameterized libraries under the terminology Silicon Algorithms.
Individual elements from the libraries, either previously entered or generated on-the-fly, are in the form of synthesizable register-transfer-level VHDL descriptions of dedicated DSP functions. The use of VHDL as output is intended to allow ISS modules to be selected with library elements from other companies and any circuit modules developed in-house by customers, and assembled into a complete design prior to synthesis and then manufacture by an ASIC foundry.
John McCanny, technical director of ISS, said: "A key aspect of our approach is the ability to capture and exploit the structure and regula
rity inherent in mapping many DSP computations to VLSI architecture in a manner that is retained right through the synthesis. Using this approach allows designs to be produced where performance, levels of integration and power consumption are comparable with fully handcrafted designs. However, our design times are reduced by more than an order of magnitude."
Dozen tech firms make list of best employers for moms
NEW YORK -- Twelve technology companies made this year's "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers" list, assembled by
Working Mother
magazine. The 12 were judged on pay scales for women, opportunities to advance, child-care options and other family-friendly benefits.
They are AT&T, Corning, Eastman Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, Hughes Electronics, IBM, Lotus Development, Marquette Electronics, Mentor Graphics, Motorola, TRW Space & Electronics Group, and Xerox.
Hole poked in Netscape security is being plugged
By
Brian Santo
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Late Sunday night, two UC Berkeley students posted on the Internet a means of decrypting messages coded with the encryption engine built into Netscape's Navigator version 1.2. The problem does not exist in version 2.0, which was announced yesterday.
Current versions of Netscape rely on random number generation to start the process of creating a session key -- the security code used for a specific transaction. The students ignored the encryption algorithm, and attacked the random-number generation process. Currently, Navigator's number generation process renders encryption keys of 40- or 128 bits; the Achilles' heel found by the Berkeley students was that it does so within a predictable spectrum. Consequently, the amount of brute force computing necessary to check all possib
le session key codes can be much more modest than previously used because there are fewer code possibilities to guess at.
The random information Navigator uses is derived from how many processes are running on a user's machine, process ID numbers, the current time in microseconds, etc. Netscape said it will work with RSA Security, which supplied the RC4 encryption algorithm upon which its encryption technology is based, to increase the amount of random information from approximately 30-bits to approximately 300-bits. They will also expand the techniques and sources used to generate the random information. Netscape will submit its solution to security experts to validate their efforts.
Netscape
said it will provide the fix for Export (40 bit) versions of Netscape Navigator later this week for downloading by customers on the Internet.
Similarly, the Netscape Commerce Server patch for Export versions (40 bit)
will be made available from our home page. Because
downloading of 128 bit
versions of the software is still not permitted by U.S. law, U.S. customers
of Netscape Navigator, Netscape Navigator Personal Edition and Netscape
Commerce Server using 128 bit versions can request the replacement from
Netscape for delivery through regular mail.
Earlier this summer, a European student proved that a 64-bit code can be broken if reasonably substantial computing power is applied.
IEEE, NIST closer to sensor standard
By
Ashok Bindra
CHICAGO -- A recent workshop of the IEEE's TC-9 Committee and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) inched closer to readying a first draft for standardizing a hardware-independent smart sensor/actuator interface for networks.
The workshop, held in conjunction with the 10th annual Sensors Expo at Rosemont Convention Center, also demonstrated the wor
king model of a smart-sensor-to-control network communications concept on three popular networks: DeviceNet, LonWorks and Smart Distributed System (SDS).
Besides developing the digital sensor/actuator interface to ease the network connection, the IEEE/NIST working group is creating a software information model of a networked sensor or actuator. The model will be object-oriented and independent of a network protocol, said Charles Yang, engineer for NIST's Sensor Integration Group. He explained that the model is composed of a set of four extensible building blocks: sensor/actuator, physical, function and network.
VHDL verification tool debuts
By
Peter Clarke
UXBRIDGE, England -- Hitting the launch pad after successful use by Siemens as a prime beta site, CheckOff-E from Abstract Hardware Limited (AHL) is a VHDL design-verification tool based on for
mal methods. It can check the behavioral equivalence between different circuit representations and will also highlight all the differences should they exist.
Formal-method-based design-verification tools can prove the equivalence of different versions of the same design--for instance, the register-transfer-level VHDL and a gate-level description--and are much faster than simulation of a circuit at the gate level. CheckOff-E can accept circuit descriptions in Electronic Design Information Format so a gate-level description doesn't need to be converted back into VHDL.
The AHL software represents designs internally using implementations of ordered binary decision diagrams (OBDD). OBDD algorithms can compare designs more rapidly and can cope with large designs more easily than other verification technologies, according to AHL.
'Sparcs' fly in high-end workstation race
By
Rick Boyd-Merritt
NEW YORK -- Hal Computer Systems (Campbell, Calif.), a subsidiary of Fujitsu Ltd., used the occasion of Unix Expo here to plant a stake in the ground for its parent as the new leader in high-performance Sparc-based workstations, grabbing what had been the mantle of Sparc developer Sun Microsystems Inc. The company's leadership role in Sparc workstations was underscored by announcements from another Sparc-clone maker, Tatung Science & Technology Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.), which used the show to unveil a class of high-end systems based on a new, fast Hypersparc processor module from Ross Technologies, another subsidiary of Fujitsu.
"We believe Sun was lagging Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard and IBM in providing computationally intensive systems, and we believe there is an opportunity for us to provide what Sun is failing to fulfill," said Arthur Goldberg, vice president of sales and marketing at Hal and a former manager at IBM's RS/6000 workstation group
.
Using the new Sparc64, Hal's own design of a 64-bit Sparc processor module, and homegrown 64-bit extensions to the Solaris OS in the new Halstation 300 series workstations, the company has taken the performance lead away from Sun. The entry-level Halstation 330, for example, is rated at 181 SPECint92 and 230 SPECfp92, compared with scores of 131 and 153 for the Sun SS20-HS21.
Level One to launch unique Ethernet hub repeater
By
Loring Wirbel
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Level One Communications Inc. will launch a unique Ethernet hub repeater management chip set at next week's NetWorld+Interop, offering direct support for Remote Monitoring (RMON) groups through a deal with Epilogue Technology Corp. (Albuquerque, N.M.). The LXT930/ 931 devices are aimed at second-tier networking OEMs, particularly in the Pacific Rim, that want to add RMON support to low-c
ost remote-office hubs.
The management architecture features local direct-memory-access (DMA) control, allowing two channels to be set up for wide-area-network links or backbone connectivity to local hubs. The set is designed to interface directly with an Intel i960 processor, used in many networking applications. In Motorola 683xx applications, developers would be able to shift from a 68360EN to a standard 68360, thereby saving overall cost in system design.
RMON is a set of nine management-information groups related to the Simple Network Management Protocol standard. Epilogue has worked with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in the past, adding RMON code support to AMD's IMR2+ repeater chip, but Epilogue vice president David Preston called the Level One 93x architecture "a step ahead of anything we've seen in Ethernet architectures to date."
VLSI Tech aims demuxer at digital set top
By
Junko Yoshida
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- VLSI Technology Inc. will sample its first MPEG-2 transport demultiplexer next month. The chip complies with Europe's Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) standard.
"The demux chip is a key part of an overall Digital Video Broadcast set-top-box design, yet most of our competitors to date have ignored its development," said Jeff Hendy, vice president and general manager of VLSI Tech's Consumer and Industrial Products Division.
Designated the VES2020, the chip is said to provide a glueless interface with other popular MPEG-2 audio/video decoder chips on the market, including parts from SGS-Thomson Microelectronics, LSI Logic Corp. and C-Cube Microsystems Inc.
The software-configurable device comes with customizable firmware to process the divergent transport streams of various Digital Video Broadcasting services. Hendy noted that "no service uses the same specification" as another; each service provider employs distinct conditional acce
ss, on-screen-display features and captioning."
8-, 16-bit MCUs the stars at Embedded Systems Conference
By
Ron Wilson
and
Terry Costlow
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The 32-bit microprocessors might have gotten the limelight, but 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers generated much of the activity and excitement here at the Embedded Systems Conference. One major new family debuted, and significant additions appeared for several existing lines of advanced MCUs.
Full story
.
DVD standard war averted, thanks to IBM
By
David Lammers
and
Yoshiko Hara
TOKYO -- The two competing Digital Video Disk
(DVD) groups reached a compromise last Friday on a single, unified standard. The long-hoped-for agreement opens the way for 4.7-Gbyte-per-disk DVD systems to hit the market in about a year for both computer and consumer use.
The unified format might be delayed by three months, awaiting completion of the chip sets needed to introduce products to the commercial market, said Toshiba Corp. executive vice president Taizo Nishimuro. But the result will be a worldwide standard for a product that's expected to displace large portions of both the CD-ROM and VCR markets--which, together, account for 80 million units a year.
Sony Corp. executive deputy president Minoru Morio said, "IBM made a great contribution to this unified format." Early this month, IBM president Lou Gerstner wrote to his counterparts at Sony, Philips, Toshiba and Matsushita Electric, saying that the members of the computer industry's Technical Working Group preferred the EFM Plus signal-modulation system proposed by the Sony-Philips camp, an
d strongly suggested that a compromise be reached.
Full story
NEC signs with ARM for 'Thumb'
By
Peter Clarke
and
David Lammers
CAMBRIDGE, England -- In a major breakthrough for its RISC processor, Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. (ARM) has signed NEC Corp.'s Systems ASIC division as the 10th licensee for its ARM core. The move should help push the small and low-power 32-bit RISC architecture into a wider range of applications. But it is also creating conflict, both within the ARM partner community and inside NEC itself.
Meanwhile, ARM was among the vendors linking up with several software suppliers at last week's Embedded Systems Conference. NEC's new license covers the ARM7TDMI core, the so-called Thumb variant, whose reworked 16-bit instruction format tailors i
t for 16-bit memory spaces. By deselecting the on-chip Thumb preprocessor, the 16-bit instructions expand to their original format, which means NEC will be able to offer the core for 32-bit systems as well.
See the EET-i
Embedded Systems SIGpage
for a
wrapup of ESC
, and the full
NEC/ARM story
.
Pinnacles, the IC document exchange group, opens membership
Richard Goering
PHOENIX -- The Pinnacles Group, an independent consortium of five semiconductor companies, is opening its membership in a bid to enhance its emerging standard for the electronic exchange of component data. To spearhead the effort, consultant Rita Glover has been named director of business development.
The original five Pinnacles member companies are Hitachi, Intel, National Semiconductor, Philips S
emiconductor and Texas Instruments. Together, they've developed a Pinnacles Component Information Standard (PCIS) that allows a single data source to support CD-ROM or Internet delivery, master selection guides and faxes-on-demand. The group plans to bring its activities under the CAD Framework Initiative (CFI) umbrella.
Voting memberships are available at two levels: the individual working group level and the project technical advisory board level, which includes a voting membership in each working group. For more information, call (602) 581-8787 or send e-mail to
ritag@doc.com
.
Maturation in evidence at embedded confab
By
Terry Costlow
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Growth in partnerships and alliances among hardware and software vendors, coupled with the introduction of a handful of development tools, points to a maturing of the embedded-systems mar
ket.
The moves, disclosed at the Embedded Systems Conference here last week, unfold as a diverse, fragmented customer base clamors for better support environments needed to shrink time-to-market and accommodate escalating embedded-systems complexity. Also surfacing are signs that this segment of the industry might be ripe for mergers and consolidation.
Now that 32- and even 64-bit processors are being priced in ranges that make them attractive for use in embedded systems, many system designers find that they can no longer write their own operating systems and develop their own boards. At the same time, a trend to systems that use multiple processors--often configured in a networked mode--is forcing designers to turn to development- and debugging-tool vendors for systems better tuned to current hardware/software integration requirements.
Find the full
ESC wrapup
on the EET-i
Embedded Systems SIGpage
.
Intel takes on MPEG with wavelet-based Indeo
By
Junko Yoshida
SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel Corp. last week unveiled an Indeo codec that uses a mix of wavelet- and transform-based algorithms to deliver compressed video comparable to that of MPEG-1 software solutions.
Using PCs based on the 133-MHz Pentium chip, Intel last week demonstrated the Indeo video interactive chip here. In a side-by-side comparison with an MPEG-1 video clip compressed at 160 kbytes, the hybrid wavelet-based video--compressed at 200 kbytes/second--showed pictures with better edge sharpness and improved color saturation.
One of the codec's most appealing features is scalability. Previous Indeo codecs throw away frames or reduce image size in order to run video across a range of CPU performance levels in a personal computer. The new codec, by contrast, scales among several different quality leve
ls or frequency bands before it starts dropping frames, depending on the CPU's horsepower.
"Human brains tend to have much more of a problem with frame dropping than clarity of pictures," said Stanley Mo, senior product marketing manager of Indeo Video Technology at Intel.
EuroDAC rollouts show shift to Windows
By
Richard Goering
and
Peter Clarke
BRIGHTON, England -- Windows-based product announcements at this week's EuroDAC will serve strong evidence of an unfolding EDA-platform shift. Viewlogic Systems Inc. (Marlboro, Mass.) will unveil Workview Office, which brings several popular Unix applications under Windows for the first time. Mentor Graphics Corp. (Wilsonville, Ore.) will roll out Personal Architect, its first attempt at PC-based schematic entry since the mid-1980s.
Zuken-Redac (Tewkesbury, Engla
nd) will preview a Windows 95 version of its Cadstar for Windows pc-board-design product. And Swedish logic-synthesis vendor Synthesia AB will show Personal VHDL, a complete VHDL simulator that will eventually run across all Windows platforms.
EDA support for Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows NT is on a sharp rise. Unix-based provider Cadence Design Systems (San Jose, Calif.) is expected to enter the fray soon with an Allegro for Windows pc-board product line.
"I'm a little surprised at how fast NT is taking off," said Rick Lucier, vice president of Viewlogic's PC group. "I thought it would take a year and a half, but some sizable accounts are looking at purchasing NT tools."
LSI readies 0.35-micron ASIC process
By
Ron Wilson
and
Brian Fuller
MILPITAS, Calif. -- LSI Logic Corp. today will introduce its 0.3
5-micron ASIC process with a dual mission: easing the design demands of complex system-level ICs and stepping up its own technical and manufacturing competency.
The G10--a name change from LSI's earlier, K-denoted ASIC offerings at 0.5 micron and above--comes to market chronologically behind competing devices from such companies as NEC Corp. But LSI's engineers have crafted an offering that leans heavily on its CoreWare macrocell strategy to integrate myriad functions, including DRAM, required on designs of well over 1 million gates.
That signals a shift in ASIC business dynamics, with price per gate becoming less important than it's been in earlier design methodologies.
"NEC brought out [0.35-micron] capability with no method for the customer to utilize that complexity," said Handel Jones, a market analyst with International Business Strategies (San Jose, Calif.). "LSI has the megacell cores and is providing the ability for customers to optimize system ASICs with some of the high-priced, premium app
lications."
Interop: Chip makers focus on SAR to cut costs of ATM
By
Loring Wirbel
ATLANTA -- Communications IC vendors will surge into next week's Networld+Interop conference with a highly integrated second generation of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switching ICs. Offerings from PMC-Sierra Inc., Siemens Components Inc., Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. and others are expected to go a long way toward cutting the cost of ATM/LAN network-interface cards to the $300 price-point industry experts believe is needed to jump-start the market.
The second-generation devices on display will center on the ATM segmentation and reassembly (SAR) function, which manages the formatting of data and voice into packets that can be transmitted over ATM networks. Hallmarks of such ICs are improved pacing and flow-control logic functions, and the integration
of some physical-layer transceiver functions.
Most notably, Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (Irvine, Calif.) will spotlight its new partnership with Digital Equipment Corp. (Maynard, Mass.). The two will define second-generation SAR chips for the 155-Mbit/second desktop and workgroup ATM market.
Meanwhile, PMC-Sierra Inc. (Burnaby, B.C.) will unveil the first combination SAR engine and physical-layer interface device: the Lasar-155. And Siemens Components Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.) will launch a multichip ATM set for low-cost PCI-based desktops, one of the first such offerings from a Europe-based company.
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