Electronics Weekly articles from April 2002

Electronics Weekly archives from April 2002

Displays light up in 2002.
April 3, 2002... The latest report by Reed Electronics Research into the worldwide displays market revealed a fall of 12 per cent in 2001, but it is expected to bounce back with a 15 per cent increase this year. RICHARD WILSON examines the figures The...

Hell of physics.
April 3, 2002... The hot topics at this year's annual EDA conference DATE were networks on a chip and deep submicron design, especially how difficult the move to 0.13?m is proving. CHRIS EVANS-PUGHE kicked her legs in Paris With attendance up compared...

Resonant tunnelling diodes are key to optical transceiver technology.
April 3, 2002... Waveguides including resonant tunnelling diodes (RTDs) are the key to Glasgow start-up Essient's low power 10GHz optical transceiver technology. Its transceiver can reduce power from over 7W to an estimated 1.2W. "All the tunnel diode...

US chemists suspend nanoparticles to create cheap, flexible solar cells.
April 3, 2002... Cheap, flexible solar cells using nanoparticles suspended in a semiconducting plastic, are the target of work by chemists in the US. The first crude examples of the devices, which use 'nanorods' of cadmium selenide dispersed in the organic...

Time to make your fortune.
April 3, 2002... Marconi engineers don't despair, there is gold in them electronics hills, writes David manners Lisbon The abyss opens for Marconi. Staring into it, some people may find golden opportunity staring back. Anyone who...

Weston flies the coop from BAE Systems.
April 3, 2002... John Weston has resigned with immediate effect from his role as director and chief executive of aerospace and defence company BAE Systems. "After more than 30 years in the company and 16 years in senior management, I have decided to look...

What's strong and sticky but can be released with low voltage DC bias?
April 3, 2002... Steve Bush Possibly the weirdest thing to come to the attention of Electronics Weekly for a long time is electric glue - or more precisely, electric un-glue. ElectRelease is an epoxy resin that can be released by applying a low...

I-Power expansion creates 30 jobs with ?240k stipend.
April 3, 2002... I-Power expansion creates 30 jobs with ?240k stipend BYLINE: Richard Ball Gateshead firm Intelligent Power Systems (I-Power) has been awarded just under a quarter of a million pound Government grant to expand production. The firm hopes...

Elixent debuts accelerator core.
April 3, 2002... Richard Ball Elixent has unveiled its reconfigurable hardware cores for signal processing. The DFA1000 accelerator cores can be configured to implement functions such as FIR filters, discrete cosine transforms, or even complete JPEG...

EU ministers fund Galileo.
April 3, 2002... Chris Druce European Union transport ministers meeting in Brussels have given the go-ahead to the E3.2bn Galileo satellite project, a scheme that could create 140,000 jobs. Developed and co-funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and...

Fujitsu shows off 0.11?m CMOS process for wireless.
April 3, 2002... Fujitsu Microelectronics has unveiled a 0.11?m CMOS process aimed specifically at networking and wireless chips. CS91 is a standard cell process capable of supporting 10 Gigabit Ethernet designs, claimed the firm. "We are focusing on...

Bridgestone treads into displays with fast bistable model.
April 3, 2002... Richard Ball Bridgestone, the Japanese tyre giant, has developed a new type of bistable display that has quicker response times than LCD. Called a quick response liquid powder display, the technology is based on a powder with 'high...

S3 aims applications at network processor market.
April 3, 2002... Dublin-based Silicon & Software Systems (S3) has an-nounced applications and a reference board for the IBM PowerNP NP4GS3 network processor (NP). "The S3 application reference board addresses a need in the NP market. It provides a low-cost...

US scientists run files on FPGAs '600 times faster than Pentium'.
April 3, 2002... Colorado State University computer scientists are using FPGAs to process large files and complex data sets at "up to 600 times faster than the quickest Pentium chip", said the university. The claim follows a military research programme to...

EDS Ireland to cash-in ; on intellectual property.
April 3, 2002... Alex Mayhew-Smith Start-up firm EDS Ireland has developed IP that it plans to license to customers as an addition to its existing routes to revenue. The company, based in Newry, Northern Ireland, received a DTI Smart award last year to...

Throw away society extended to phones.
April 3, 2002... Disposable mobile phones are coming to the UK following completion of an exclusive deal between California-based company Hop-On and an unnamed private London-based company. The deal, worth $25m annually, is for a minimum purchase of one...

Voice-activated phone bid.
April 3, 2002... Phones that only work when they recognise their owner's voice are closer following a deal between Reading-based Domain Dynamics, SchlumbergerSema and Mitsubishi. Unlike previous attempts at introducing biometric technology for this...

Worried by mobiles? Scientist offers help.
April 3, 2002... Melanie Reynolds A website for people worried that mobile phone use has affected their health has been launched by a scientist who previously worked on a health risk research project for the industry. Dr George Carlo was chief...

AEA wins ?47m MoD cell contract.
April 3, 2002... Richard Wilson AEA Technology has secured ?47m to advise the MoD on portable power systems requirements, as well as supplying batteries and chargers for the UK's Bowman battlefield communications systems programme. Under the terms of...

Industry indicators point to recovery, but telecoms revival will take longer.
April 3, 2002... Chris Druce Advent Venture Partners believes that there will be a pick-up in the fortunes of the UK and US technology markets during the second quarter of this year, following recent positive indicators. However, the investment firm...

Koreans plan hike in DRAM production.
April 3, 2002... Korean sources say that Samsung and Hynix will jack up DRAM production by over 60 per cent this year - even though they estimate that DRAM unit demand will rise only by 40 to 45 per cent. The increases in production quantities stem purely...

Billion dollar LAN telephony market sales triple in 2001.
April 3, 2002... The LAN telephony market reached a value of $1bn in 2001, with sales tripling from the previous year, just three years after the market started according to research company In-Stat/MDR. The report suggests the market will quadruple in...

ST leap-frogs Toshiba as second largest chip company in the world.
April 3, 2002... STMicroelectronics is the second largest semiconductor company in the world with Intel number one, according to US analysts iSuppli. ST had revenues of $6.36bn compared to sales of $6.06bn estimated for third placed Toshiba, and $6.05 for...

US police use Java-enabled mobiles to find deadringers.
April 3, 2002... Motorola, Visionics, and Wirehound have demonstrated facial recognition capabilities on Java technology-enabled mobile phones which have been developed specifically for a law enforcement agency in the US. The delivery platform is...

TT Electronics sees sales to automotive sector grow by 10 per cent.
April 3, 2002... TT Electronics, formerly TT Group, has seen electronics sales to the automotive sector grow by 10 per cent over the past year, making up half its electronics divisions' entire turnover. "The highlight of the year has been the strong growth...

Two-way comms system trialled in TV spectrum.
April 3, 2002... Mississippi-based start-up SIGFX has started trials of its two-way wireless communications system which uses the vacant spectrum in analogue and digital TV transmissions to carry voice or data services. The firm claimed to be the first to...

Non-executive director shortage hits UK firms.
April 3, 2002... Harry Yeates Increased personal risk and time demands could lead to a shortage of talented non-executive directors in UK firms, according to a survey of FTSE 100 chairmen published last week. While 82 per cent of chairmen surveyed...

Chip firms attacked for pre-empting WLAN spec.
April 3, 2002... Harry Yeates Chip firms are speculating on the eventual details of wireless LAN standards in an attempt to lead the market, by developing products based on draft documents. The practise has provoked an open letter from Stuart Kerry,...

Mobile phone firms run shy of 3G in Ireland.
April 3, 2002... Only three mobile phone operators have applied for the four 3G mobile phone licences being offered in Ireland. Hutchison Whampoa, mmO2 and Vodafone Ireland have all applied for an 'A' licence and the last two have also applied for a 'B'...

MPEG-4 rates announced as Nokia teams with licensors.
April 3, 2002... Royalty rates have been announced for MPEG-4 AAC audio as Nokia joins AT&T, Dolby, Fraunhofer and Sony in the licensor forum. MPEG-4 AAC (advanced audio coding) is geared towards Internet streaming, electronic media distribution, multimedia...

UK software tool firm Artisan to extend range of applications.
April 3, 2002... Cheltenham-based Artisan Software Tools is looking to expand its business by aiming its UML embedded real-time development tools at a wider range of applications. "We are looking at leveraging our technology base to two or three adjoining...

LANergy to drive home networks.
April 3, 2002... Alex Mayhew-Smith Welsh powerline comms start-up LANergy is in talks with electronics OEMs interested in licensing its networking interface software for use in their products. The company said it was in discussion with a number of...

Zarlink fab in Plymouth bought by German firm.
April 3, 2002... German mixed signal foundry X-Fab has bought Zarlink Semiconductor's wafer fab in Plymouth. As part of the deal Zarlink will continue to use the fab on a foundry basis. "X-Fab is delighted to acquire Zarlink's top-notch factory and to...

US mull chip tariff.
April 3, 2002... David Manners The US government is considering putting a tariff on semiconductors as part of the looming trade war between Europe and America. Grant Aldonas, under-secretary of commerce for international trade in the US government,...

Design for industry's future.
April 10, 2002... Government, industry and academia are joining forces to train the next generation of PCB design engineers and safeguard the UK's ?45bn-a-year design market. Chris Druce writes Like Tolkein's elves leaving Middle Earth, high-volume...

Holographic data technique holds key to cheap 500Gbyte storage at UK start-up.
April 10, 2002... Harry Yeates A cheap 500Gbyte storage disk with read and write speeds of 750Mbit/s could be available as soon as 2004, if research at a Cambridge University spin-out comes to fruition. Polight Technologies is developing technology for...

ManxRadio tunes into digital vibe.
April 10, 2002... Manx Radio, the Isle of Man commercial radio broadcast station, has begun the process of switching over its entire broadcast operation from analogue to digital radio technology. The radio station, which has been operating since 1964, is...

Recruitment company predicts improving employment climate.
April 10, 2002... Manpower has predicted job prospects in the electronics market will remain at the same levels over the next three months, effectively an improvement for the industry. Ranked in Manpower's sector league table, electronics is currently in...

DSP war has just kicked off.
April 10, 2002... The first in a series of interviews with the CEOs behind the UK's chip rennaissance features the founder of Siroyan, Ken Will He spoke to David manners Siroyan intends to do for DSP what ARM did for Risc. ARM pioneered the 'chipless,...

Cypress considers move towards licensing USB IP.
April 10, 2002... Steve Bush Chip-maker Cypress Semiconductor is considering moving to an intellectual property (IP) licensing model for its USB 'On-The-Go' products. "Cypress is considering the option of selling our USB OTG [On-The-Go] IP based on...

IEEE 1394b approval means gigabit signalling can run the 100 metres.
April 10, 2002... Steve Bush IEEE 1394b has been approved by the IEEE. The new standard allows for gigabit signalling and, by extending signalling distance to 100 metres, makes use in data storage and home network backbones possible. Before this...

Govt creates 1,000 UK jobs with ?86m Galileo provision.
April 10, 2002... The Government is providing ?86m towards the cost of the Galileo satellite project in a move the DTI believes will create up to 1,000 UK jobs. Galileo is Europe's future global positioning and navigation system, which will offer long-term...

Blue OLED is light source for optical chemical sensor.
April 10, 2002... Harry Yeates A blue OLED is the light source for a new optical chemical sensor developed by scientists in the US. Unlike existing laser or inorganic LED sources, which are bulky and expensive, the OLED can be integrated with the device's...

Canadian tool speeds analogue chip design.
April 10, 2002... Richard Ball Canadian firm Analog Design Automation (ADA) has released tools that aim to speed analogue chip design. ADA's two products are Creative Genius, which compiles a database of analogue IP, and IP Explorer Genius, a tool for...

SiGe enters 10Gbit/s zone.
April 10, 2002... SiGe Semiconductor is to produce interface chips for optoelectronics circuits, initially at 2.5Gbit/s, but moving to 10Gbit/s later this year. The Canadian firm said it licensed the technology from a "major telecoms manufacturer" to create...

Mechanically cooled germanium spectrometer detects radiation.
April 10, 2002... This handheld germanium radiation spectrometer can detect the signature gamma rays from radioactive material, and has high enough energy resolution to give information on the amount of material present. Instead of the liquid nitrogen...

Scientists control nanotube growth.
April 10, 2002... Steve Bush Carbon nanotubes can now be grown under control in three dimensions from a silicon surface, following work at the US Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "It's a simple and elegant process that provides unprecedented control...

Parthus in merger with IP business.
April 10, 2002... Parthus Technologies is merging with Ceva, the IP licensing business of the DSP Group (DSPG), creating a combined digital signal processing IP company. Under the terms of the merger DSPG shareholders will have a controlling stake in the...

UK private equity firm buys terminals business of Simoco.
April 10, 2002... The terminals business of struggling TETRA radio specialist Simoco Digital Systems (SDS) has been bought by a London-based private equity firm. The Cambridge company has been renamed Sepura and the 76 remaining employees will continue in...

Japanese chip firms reduce production spending to ?2bn.
April 10, 2002... David Manners The collective investment in new production equipment by the big Japanese semiconductor firms will amount to just a third of what Intel is investing this year. This year, the investment in equipment will drop by 30 per...

Test firm says customers are still "ultra cautious".
April 10, 2002... Melanie Reynolds The optical industry will have to struggle on until at least 2004 before the market starts to come out of its slump, according to test and measurement company Tektronix. "Once we get through it [the slump] we believe...

Scottish Universities make 38 breakthrough projects.
April 10, 2002... Harry Yeates The third round of a six year, ?33m funding initiative for potential breakthrough technologies from Scottish universities has seen nearly ?6m allocated to 38 projects. Among them are gallium nitride micro-LEDs for...

Marconi not building but is lodging in Cambridge.
April 10, 2002... Chris Druce Marconi will no longer be building a dedicated research lab as part of Cambridge University's ?350m science and technology site. Instead, Marconi has taken space within the Bill Gates building on the University's West...

IR snaps up Fairchild line.
April 10, 2002... International Rectifier has acquired the high-reliability power Mosfet product line from Fairchild Semiconductor for $30m. Fairchild acquired the defence and aerospace products itself when it bought Intersil's discrete power business last...

CRL has q3.4m plan to make PC intuitive.
April 10, 2002... Central Research Laboratories (CRL) is leading a two year, E3.4m project to develop user interfaces for PCs, PDAs and other computing devices. "It's about enabling people to use information sources in a more intuitive way," said John...

Manchester builds city to highlight skills shortage.
April 10, 2002... A 'city' is being raised on dockland in Greater Manchester's Salford Quays as part of a campaign to highlight and address the national skills shortage. SkillCity, created by The Prince's Trust and UK Skills, is themed around a real city...

Electronic tongue monitors river effluent.
April 10, 2002... Scientists at Cardiff University have developed an electronic 'tongue' that could be used to monitor rivers or factories' pipes for dangerous chemicals. "We've borrowed technology from chromatography and transferred that onto the surface...

Analysts predict 27% upturn in programmable DSP market.
April 10, 2002... The programmable DSP chip worldwide market is predicted to increase by an average of 27.2 per cent a year over the next five years, according to analyst company Forward Concepts. It expects the market to increase from $4.256bn in 2001 to...

US Justice Dept drops Future investigation.
April 10, 2002... The US Department of Justice has dropped its three year investigation of Canada-based component distributor Future Electronics. The US authority has informed Canadian officials that it found no basis to continue the investigation which...

Chip processing patent row breaks out.
April 10, 2002... ASML has brought fraud claims against its main rival in the stepper/scanner market, Nikon of Japan. The claims follow a patent infringement suit earlier in the year brought by Nikon against ASML. The patents relate to optics and mechanical...

Photonic crystals light up.
April 10, 2002... Photonic crystals for optical circuits were the subject of a paper at this week's Institute of Physics Congress in Brighton. Dr David Sharp from the University of Oxford described how a technique known as holographic lithography is used to...

Scottish start-up builds process line to show LEDs on 8in wafers.
April 10, 2002... Harry Yeates MicroEmissive Displays is building a process line to demonstrate its devices on eight inch wafers, and expects to release its first development kits in the next couple of months. The Edinburgh start-up developing low-power...

Flomerics simplifies radio design.
April 10, 2002... Flomerics has launched Micro-stripes V6.0, aimed at optimising the design and signal characteristics of radio transmitters. Micro-stripes is the company's electromagnetic analysis software, which now features a number of automatic modelling...

US scientist wants to do an HG Wells.
April 10, 2002... A US scientist last week claimed sending a human through time was only an "engineering problem". Ron Mallett, Professor of Physics at the University of Connecticut, said he was building a time machine to demonstrate how a sub-atomic...

ST denies rumours of dropping programmable logic ambitions.
April 10, 2002... David Manners Claims by rivals that STMicroelectronics may be dropping its planned entry into the programmable logic business are wide of the mark, according to ST sources. Last month Lattice Semiconductor's v-p of strategic planning,...

Alcatel partners Dundee battery firm.
April 17, 2002... Dundee company MPower Batteries has entered into a partnership with Alcatel to design battery packs chips for use in cell phones, private mobile radios, PDAs (personal data assistant) and digital cameras. MPower claimed the partnership was...

Worried US plans chip tariffs.
April 17, 2002... The rise of the European chip industry has made the US nervous, david manners writes two US members of the top ten - Texas Instruments and Motorola - have recently shown vulnerability. With the US still the largest market for...

Nortel warns of 'still slow' comms sector.
April 17, 2002... Nortel Networks IS still seeing a sluggish telecoms sector with predictions of lower than expected revenues of about $2.9bn for the first quarter of 2002. Revenue in Q1 2001 was $6.18bn and $3.46bn in Q4 2001. This is despite an...

UK firm puts a spin on piezoelectric gyros small enough for medical use.
April 17, 2002... Steve Bush Better miniature solid-state gyros could spring from deepest Hertfordshire through a development programme at start-up European Technology For Business (ETB). The gyros are made of piezoelectric materials. "These materials...

Hitachi adds controller to flash family.
April 17, 2002... Hitachi has announced 128, 256 and 512Mbit AND flash memories with an on-chip memory controller. "We believe we are the first ones to include the controller," said Joachim Rutt, manager of the firm's system memory group. 'SuperAND' is...

Speed kills traditional PCB design.
April 17, 2002... Joe Dalton Customarily, electrical designers remain in their logical world, where they enter a design and its constraints, fine-tune it through simulation and verification; and then pass the design and constraints to layout. There,...

Digital TV rules, ok?
April 17, 2002... With the collapse of ITV Digital industry pundits might have expected the Government to revise its timetable for analogue switch off, but that hasn't happened, says melanie reynolds Digital TV is a fact of life. It does not matter if the...

Glass boosts holographic storage.
April 17, 2002... Harry Yeates Cambridge University spin-out Polight Technologies is developing a chalcogenide glass that undergoes a very rapid, very large change in refractive index on illumination. It also needs no pre- or post- processing to prepare for...

EU approves directive to recycle electrical waste.
April 17, 2002... The European Parliament has approved a draft version of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive. The aim of the directive is to stop consumers throwing out electrical equipment with standard waste in a bid to greatly...

CDT plant opens for business.
April 17, 2002... Cambridge Display Technology's ?18m development facility was officially opened last week by Lord Sainsbury, the Minister for Science and Innovation. According to David Fyfe, CDT's CEO, the firm's light emitting polymer (LEP) technology...

Printed plastic start-up gets ?6.3m funding.
April 17, 2002... Harry Yeates Cambridge start-up Plastic Logic has closed a ?6.3m funding round and added a new investor to support its development of inkjet-printed plastic electronics. The company is now working on finalising a further ?1.7m in the...

DTI plans UK centre for nanotechnology.
April 17, 2002... The government is looking into ways of setting-up a national micromachining and nanotechnology centre. So far the DTI has asked the Regional Development Associations to make suggestions and Advantage West Midlands has already responded. ...

Motorola to join 90nm process gang as TSMC gears up production for Q3.
April 17, 2002... David Manners Motorola is to join in the collaboration between STMicroelectronics, Philips and TSMC for the development of a 90nm process. The arrangement recalls the 1980s joint research effort between Motorola, IBM, Toshiba and...

TI and Fairchild offer two-week lead times.
April 17, 2002... As the semiconductor industry waits for a pick-up in the market, two leading logic device suppliers confirm their commitment to two-week lead times on products. Only last month some suppliers were warning that lead times on certain...

Bristol firm to link-up on bio-organic disk drive.
April 17, 2002... Harry Yeates Bristol start-up Nanomagnetics intends to demonstrate an 8Gbyte/inch2 disk drive using its bio-organic magnetic material late this summer, as it looks to forge a partnership to develop the technology. The firm is also...

Broadband company lights up its MAN in Manchester.
April 17, 2002... Simon Hunt: "There is major demand for high capacity broadband". 186k, the telecoms business of Lattice Group, has completed and lit its Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) in Manchester and Birmingham. The construction of both MANs is...

Motorsport fundraising crosses winning line.
April 17, 2002... Chris Druce Chris Aylett, CEO of the Motorsport Industry Association (MIA), has hailed the group's ?3m fundraising challenge a "great success". The MIA originally had eight weeks to raise ?3m from the electronics, aerospace,...

Former Lucent employees on secrets charge.
April 17, 2002... Two former Lucent Technologies engineers accused of stealing company secrets are to be charged with stealing information from another four companies. The two, along with another man - all Chinese nationals - are accused of stealing source...

Terahertz imager 'in four months'.
April 17, 2002... Steve Bush Producing a terahertz imager is the aim of an unusual four month brainstorming project organised by the European Space Agency. "The Star Tiger project will gather together a small team of enthusiastic scientists and...