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ISSCC International Solid-State Circuits Conference February 15-17, 1999 San Francisco Marriott Hotel San Francisco ISSCC: Hitachi researchers extend battery life in standby mode(02/19/99, 5:03 p.m. EDT)Hitachi Ltd. has developed a technology that dramatically lowers power consumption in standby mode of a large-scale LSI device. When the chip is installed in a portable unit such as a handheld PC, the battery hours in standby mode will be extended more than 10 times, Hitachi researchers reported at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference here this week. Path to one-chip phone strewn with obstacles(02/19/99, 4:58 p.m. EDT)As the electronics industry gears up for applications beyond the PC, a debate was brewing at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference here this week about the possibility of crafting a single-chip-mobile phone. With analog RF and communications circuits as two of its main themes, ISSCC found itself wrestling with both the technical and economic hurdles that are keeping such a phone chip elusive. Analysis: Memory bottleneck continues to haunt designers(02/19/99, 4:57 p.m. EDT)Concern over processor-to-memory bandwidth was a common thread running through the papers on CPUs, media processors and memory devices presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference here this week. SLDRAM group morphs to DDR II(12:02 p.m. EDT, 02/19/99)The field of organized initiatives pursuing alternatives to the Intel-backed Rambus DRAM has shrunk by one. A decision by the SLDRAM Inc. consortium to wrap up its own work and throw its support behind the emerging DDR II spec cleaves the DRAM industry into two major camps, amassed along the boundary between desktop and server: the Rambus approach, initially aimed at desktop PCs, and the server-bound double-data-rate SDRAM. Broadcom, Alcatel tip DSL offerings(02/18/99, 4:35 p.m. EDT)Broadcom Corp. this week at ISSCC offered the first peek at a universal quadrature-amplitude modulation transceiver for xDSL. The processor can handle QAM constellations ranging from four to 256 points, allowing its downstream speed to hit 51 Mbits/second. Broadcom said the chip can be used for either asymmetric or very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line networks. Hitachi to market SH3 as IP core(02/18/99, 4:35 p.m. EDT)Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc. has quietly let it be known at ISSCC this week that it would soon market its SH3-DSP chip as a synthesizable core. The device, which combines a 32-bit, 133-MHz microprocessor with a 133-Mips digital signal processor, is currently available only as a packaged part (the SH7729). The maneuver is intended to make the SH3-DSP more competitive with the ARM and Oak DSP cores, which are available as highly customizable soft cores, said Peter Clark, president and chief executive officer. Papers outline biochips to restore eyesight, movement(02/18/99, 4:35 p.m. EDT)The possibility of using RF-powered electronic implants to stimulate the nerves of paraplegics and the retinas of those with certain eye diseases arose this week in a session on emerging technologies at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Hardware vs. software debate draws range of supporters(02/18/99, 3:28 p.m. EDT)"Has hardware become a second-class citizen to software?" That was the knotty question posed at one of the evening panel sessions at this week's International Solid State Circuits Conference. Varied analog technologies vie for single-chip phone(02/18/99, 3:23 p.m. EDT)While the keynote address by Broadcom founder Henry Samueli mapped some exciting achievements and prospects for building high bandwidth communications circuits, opening-day presenters at this week's International Solid States Circuits Conference (ISSCC) were more modulated in their assessments of the ability to build a single-chip cell phone. Economics will delay the single-chip phone(02/17/99, 8:39 p.m. EDT)While a cellular telephone IC integrating radio and base-band processing could become technically possible within the next few years, economic reasons will most likely delay its adoption for the foreseeable future. Carbon nanotubes may contend for silicon's crown(02/17/99, 7:56 p.m. EDT)When silicon miniaturization runs out of steam, carbon nanotubes could give engineers an alternative medium in which to build transistors, diodes and other semiconductor device structures. Spread spectrum clocks mitigate EMI(02/17/99, 1:50 p.m. EDT)The concept of spread-spectrum clocking is gaining popularity as a simple way to lower electromagnetic interference (EMI), which is becoming more severe as processor speeds increase. Two papers at this week's ISSCC explored different methods of building clocks that take advantage of spectrum spreading. IBM sees exciting future for SOI(02/16/99, 2:11 p.m. EDT)With two ISSCC papers on Silicon-on Insulator (SOI) PowerPC chips, IBM Microelectronics has barely scratched the surface of SOI's promise, according to the company's engineers. The future of the technology is open-ended, beginning with the obvious promises of improved power and performance, but including more subtle advantages and reaching to new, as yet unimagined structures in silicon. Panel criticizes engineering education(02/16/99, 2:07 p.m. EDT)Engineering educators, the media and engineers themselves all came in for criticism Monday evening (2/15) at an ISSCC panel entitled, "They don't make engineers like they used to . . . ?" The panel looked at changes in engineering education, changes in the workplace and changes in society that have reshaped the landscape for today's recent graduates. ISSCC keynoters scope out challenges of high bandwidth systems(02/15/99, 9:55 p.m. EDT)High bandwidth systems will drive the electronics industry forward, said keynoters at the International Solid State Circuit Conference here today. But these emerging consumer and communications systems will stretch the complexity of both digital and analog semiconductor design to provide the kind of performance and price characteristics such systems will require. NEC takes leap into programmable logic(02/15/99, 10:17 a.m. EDT)NEC Corp. is set to unveil a landmark reconfigurable-computing device at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference here this week. The 147,000-gate, FPGA-like chip is intended specifically for reconfigurable processing of numerically intensive algorithms. Toshiba boasts FRAM prototype with DRAM-like speeds(02/15/99, 10:14 a.m. EDT)Toshiba Corp. may be poised to realize a production-worthy ferroelectric RAM-a technology long pursued by Japanese semiconductor companies as the ultimate non-volatile memory. In a paper to be presented in San Francisco this week at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, Toshiba researchers will describe a 16-kbit FRAM prototype that they say achieves DRAM-like speeds for both initial and random access. Embedded DRAM headed for architectural overhaul(02/15/99, 10:10 a.m. EDT)As embedded DRAM becomes a key part of chip process technology, companies are looking toward new approaches to the architecture itself. In separate papers that Hitachi and NEC will present to the International Solid-State Circuits Conference here this week, researchers will outline new-yet very different-approaches to improving both initial access time and overall bandwidth of on-chip DRAM data transfers. Broadband consumer apps will drive silicon, keynoters say(02/11/99, 6:11 p.m. EDT)The merger of consumer electronics and broadband networking will drive semiconductor technology in the next decade, keynoters will tell the International Solid State Circuit Conference this month. They will articulate the new religion of what is increasingly seen as a post-PC world in which Mips, megahertz and data processing take a back seat to multimedia applications and new ways of measuring progress in silicon.  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