Electronics Weekly articles from November 2003

Electronics Weekly archives from November 2003

Flat screen idols.
November 5, 2003... Consumers are asking for flat panel TVs, but can the LCD market cope with demand? asks RICHARD WILSON f we are looking for an indicator of the supply and pricing implications of recent growth in the large panel thin-film transistor (TFT)...

Valley dwellers search for golden eggs.
November 5, 2003... Companies in Silicon Valley are having to graft to remain in profit. Where are the good times? asks DAVID MANNERS rom the taxi-drivers to the CEOs, the denizens of Silicon Valley have the same way of describing the recovery: "It's slow."...

Bend me, shape me...
November 5, 2003... Philips is doing it on steel backplanes, Plastic Logic has organic circuits on polymer. HARRY YEATES gets flexible uilding a flexible display - whatever you choose flexible to mean - is a fiendishly complex task. You need a bendy substrate,...

3D viewing figured out by LCDs.
November 5, 2003... A number of UK firms have adapted LCDs to produce 3D images with great success, says RICHARD BALL writes hat do Jaws, liquid crystal displays, Euclidean space and parasitic extraction all have in common? The answer: They all started with...

Teacher training.
November 5, 2003... Axiom's Christine Boyland originally qualified as an instructor to train the contract firm's workers to exacting military standards. Now the firm offers the same training to customers and other firms, reports MELANIE REYNOLDS Contract...

X-Fab links up on big CMOS device.
November 5, 2003... Belgian fabless image sensor company FillFactory has used the UK's X-Fab to jointly develop a large area 3,048x4,560pixel CMOS device. X-Fab was particularly involved in cutting dark current - achieving an optical dynamic range of 65dB. The...

Mg battery ups charging cycles.
November 5, 2003... Israeli researchers from Bar-Ilan University have produced a rechargeable magnesium battery that can sustain thousands of charging cycles. According to a report on the Battery Power Online website, Professor Doron Aurbach's battery has 60Wh/kg...

Photon detectors use chips to map radiation.
November 5, 2003... Photon detectors using superconductors could be used to accurately map the background radiation of the universe or act as sensors in medical applications. Photons from optical sources through to X-rays can be detected by a superconducting...

Accelerometer drives down ; production costs.
November 5, 2003... Omron has prototypes of a high-sensitivity three-axis accelerometer for consumer applications. Called Shimant, the 2.5x2.5x0.6mm design is optimised to keep costs low by, among other things, reducing the need for inter-step inspection during...

Europe fails to use fabless chip model.
November 5, 2003... Has the fabless semiconductor model failed in Europe? A variety of opinions were shared on the subject at the inaugural International Fabless Forum 2003 in Edinburgh last week. "There are no successful fabless companies in the UK, except...

Hard-wired logic chips with in-built algorithms simplify motor control.
November 5, 2003... International Rectifier has filled the last gap in its motor control portfolio with a pair of controller chips. The firm now produces controllers, power Mosfets, IGBTs and high voltage driver chips. In contrast to the normal DSP-based...

IC cuts cross-talk in old backplanes.
November 5, 2003... Quellan is sampling a cross-talk cancellation IC which allows telecoms companies to install new switch cards in legacy backplanes enabling them to run at over 5Gbit/s. The chip, called CSP-Nx600 performs the equalisation, modulation and...

Sponges made of fibre-optic.
November 5, 2003... Scientists from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs have found a deep-sea sponge with an optical fibre skeleton. "We believe this novel biological optical fibre may shed light upon new bio-inspired processes that may lead to better fibre optic...

Young Scottish tech firms tap into revenue streams.
November 5, 2003... Young Scottish technology companies are moving into revenue streams, according to Ian McDonald, CEO of Connect Scotland. "In the last 12 months we are seeing firms selling their products now," he said. About 80 per cent of young technology...

Graduates STEP towards business with placement scheme.
November 5, 2003... The STEP Solutions Electronic Engineering work placement scheme is creating a new wave of potential entrepreneurs, with 27 per cent of participating undergraduates saying they are interested in creating a start-up business. "This has given me a...

afdec figures.
November 5, 2003... September 2003 book-to-bill ratios Semiconductors (Industrial Market) 0.94 Passives****************0.93 Electromechanical************0.94 Total********************0.94 "At last the slight signs of a recovery," writes Gary...

Design firm unveils InGaP demonstrators.
November 5, 2003... Essex-based Plextek revealed details of two InGaP technology demonstrators yesterday (Tuesday November 4) at the RF and Microwave Society conference in Corby, Northamptonshire. Developed with III/V foundry GCS in California, the larger chip is...

GPRS system turns dairy farmers into milk monitors.
November 5, 2003... Pembrokeshire firm Arbel Electronics is using GPRS to communicate with its milk tank control system for dairy farmers. Arbel has designed a system for remote monitoring and control of industrial processes using any Internet connected PC. "The...

Universities show off 1.4Tops supercomputer.
November 5, 2003... The universities of Cambridge and Cranfield have unveiled their latest supercomputer, capable of 1.4 trillion operations per second. Based on some 1,000 Sun Microsystems processors, the machine called Franklin uses Sun's high speed...

Ultra-wideband firm offers free single-pulse technology.
November 5, 2003... The tortuous path to fixing a standard for ultra-wideband comms has taken yet another twist with Xtreme Spectrum offering its patents through a free licensing process. US-based Xtreme Spectrum is proposing a single pulse method of transmitting...

Canadian WLAN company eyes European train commuters.
November 5, 2003... Ottawa start-up PointShot Wireless is targeting European trains for its wireless LAN, which uses mobile phone services such as CDMA and GPRS for the uplink, and satellite in the downlink. It uses "aggressive" compression and scheduling...

Alliance enters power supply arena with EMI reducing chips.
November 5, 2003... Alliance Semiconductor will diversify into the power supply market later this month with its first two chips for the sector which are claimed to significantly reduce EMI. Six more chips will be added in Q1 2004. Most of the design wins have...

Bookham fails to find buyer for site.
November 5, 2003... Bookham Technology has failed to find a buyer for its Milton site, and closed the manufacturing plant there. Eighty five employees were made redundant at the beginning of September and the site continues as an administrative centre employing...

US comms start-up develops chip to cancel noise in legacy backplanes.
November 5, 2003... US start-up Quellan has come up with a way to prolong the life of telecommunications equipment in the field by designing a chip to cancel cross-talk noise in multi-Gbit/s backplanes. The chip allows switch cards to be used in existing...

Automotive sales get environmental boost.
November 5, 2003... Government legislation on environmental and safety issues is triggering a significant increase in sales of electronics components and systems for under-the-bonnet automotive applications. The regulatory and cost benefits of some electronics...

EEF rebrands to reflect changes.
November 5, 2003... The Engineering Employers' Federation (EEF) has decided to rebrand itself as 'EEF, the manufacturers organisation'. The organisation claims this is "meant to better reflect the changing nature of the EEF's membership and its increasing...

Opto firm wins [pounds sterling]80,000 chip laser contract.
November 5, 2003... Intense, the optoelectronics firm, has won an [pounds sterling]80,000 research contract from BAE Systems at the virtual Defence Technology Centre (DTC) on Electromagnetic Remote Sensing (EMRS). John Roulston, chairman of the EMRS DTC...

Lead-free, RoHS: comments please.
November 5, 2003... Comments from the Electronics Industry are needed for the Lead-free and RoHS Directive compliance labelling scheme. Input is requested from all sectors in order to establish the marking requirements on: materials, boards, wires, components and...

Flat 2004 for mobile systems.
November 5, 2003... Ericsson is expecting no growth in the mobile network systems market next year. The system supplier said it predicts the mobile systems market in 2004 to be in line with 2003. This is after a 10 per cent fall in the market this year, said...

Japanese follow European firms and move production to China.
November 5, 2003... Japanese electronics companies are following the European trend and moving production to China, but are wary of future competition. "I think, on balance, China is beneficial to us," Soichi Yukawa, president of Omron's components division told...

Revenues rise at chip tooling firm.
November 5, 2003... Welsh chip equipment maker Trikon Technologies has announced quarterly revenues of $8.4m, a rise of 87 per cent compared to last year. "I am pleased to report 40 per cent revenue growth on the $6m in the second quarter 2003," said Dr Jihad...

Atmel seeks staff for Tyneside wafer plant as market recovers.
November 5, 2003... Atmel is hiring operators for the North Tyneside wafer fab which it acquired from Siemens in September 2000. The acquisition was made just when the chip market started to trend downwards before lurching into the worst recession in its history....

Light-emitting silicon IP firm spun-out in UK.
November 5, 2003... University of Surrey researchers have spun out a company to exploit light-emitting silicon intellectual property developed at the university. Called Si-Light Technologies, the firm has named its method of persuading silicon to emit 'dislocation...

Dundee University spin-out in talks to market technology as gas sensor.
November 5, 2003... Dundee University spin- out Aktina is in discussions over mass producing its technology as a gas sensor. The materials firm has liquid precursors for thin film technology which can produce sensors. Professor James Cairns, chief technical...

Canadians to access broadband; 08oct03LambdaRouter.jpg.
November 5, 2003... The idea of processing information entirely in the optical domain, rather than using slow, noisy electrons, is one of the long-term themes guiding photonics research. However, not only does a light-based processor appear an ambitious aim, but...

Solar power demand sees Sharp expand in UK with photovoltaic module facility.
November 5, 2003... Citing increasing demand for solar power, Sharp Electronics is expanding its manufacturing plant in Wrexham with a photovoltaic module facility. Modules will be aimed at residential, commercial and industrial uses, said the firm, and will...

Hollow core fibre cuts non-linearity transmission.
November 5, 2003... BlazePhotonics has shown a hollow core fibre that cuts non-linearity when transmitting optical pulses. The Bath University spin-out says the technology, also called photonic bandgap fibre, is ideally suited to transmitting pulses from...

Actel makes triple jump in technology with 0.13[micro]m flash-based FPGA family.
November 5, 2003... This week Actel is taping out its first 0.13[micro]m chip which will be the first product in a family of flash-based FPGAs made on 0.13[micro]m. The first samples should be out of the fab in February 2004. The fab is Infineon Technology's...

Qubits coupled in NEC project.
November 5, 2003... NEC and the RIKEN Institute of Physical and Chemical Research claim to have demonstrated a solid-state device consisting of two coupled quantum bit (qubits). The device is a C-NOT (controlled-NOT) gate, one of two types of quantum logic block...

Spin-out develops sub-100[micro]m stencil.
November 5, 2003... Heriot-Watt University spin-out MicroStencil is developing a screen printing stencil which will allow sub-100[micro]m pitch printing of conductive interconnect material directly onto wafers, chips or boards. "Currently if you're doing wafer...

Gearing up for the analogue switch-off.
November 5, 2003... The University of Surrey has introduced a course called 'Digital Terrestrial Television: Towards Analogue Switchover' which it believes will address the remaining issues as the analogue TV switch-off date moves slowly closer. The Government has...

Engineers learn to manage.
November 5, 2003... Lack of management skills is a criticism often thrown at engineers, but the University of Oxford is planning to help in at least one area with its 'Effective Project Management' course. The one day course, on 25 November 2003, is aimed at...

Communicating cultures.
November 12, 2003... In Italy you can receive a message from the Pope for 10p a day, while the Chinese send pay-as-you-go cards to their deceased relatives. There's a lot to learn about the mobile phone culture. ALEX MAYHEW-SMITH reports id you know Intel has...

Multiple choice.
November 12, 2003... Benchmarking processors for multimedia applications helps designers meet system needs, writes MARKUS LEVY mid the chaos of the last three years, the relative strength of the advanced consumer products part of the electronics market has not...

Innovation on show.
November 12, 2003... Omron's technology exhibition in Japan shows off the company's wide ranging portfolio. STEVE BUSH paid a visit est known in Europe for its relays and switches, Japanese firm Omron has a portfolio which includes products from gas flow...

Researchers capture quantum bit as polarised light.
November 12, 2003... US scientists have stored a quantum bit as light in rubidium vapour. The electric field in light follows its polarisation. "It can oscillate horizontally or it can oscillate vertically. Those are the zeroes and ones of your qubit in this case,"...

Wireless visions.
November 12, 2003... There is a thriving scene for wireless technology around Ottawa. HARRY YEATES braves the Canadian weather ttawa, the world's second-coldest capital city, is spewing out some piping hot technology companies at the moment, and wireless is one...

Appliance of science.
November 12, 2003... Silicon Valley is no longer a macho giver of life to new technologies. DAVID MANNERS flew in to see for himself ilicon Valley is changing, but when was it ever not? This time though it's changing in a fundamental way - less out to produce...

Waveguide expands with new premises.
November 12, 2003... The Waveguide Solution (TWS), formed earlier this year after a management buy-out from Quasar Microwave Technology, has opened new premises in Newton Abbott. Pictured twisting a waveguide are Neil Parish MEP (left) and local MP Richard...

Instruments in the band.
November 12, 2003... A report on wireless technologies in the 2.4GHz band has produced interesting results, says MELANIE REYNOLDS espite concerns about the increasing number of wireless technologies using the unlicensed 2.4GHz band there is actually plenty of...

First p-Mosfet for buck converters.
November 12, 2003... Siliconix has introduced what it claims is the first p-channel power Mosfet optimised for high-side switching in synchronous buck converters. Called the Si3867DV, it has an 0.051m1/2 on-resistance and a typical gate charge of 7nC. This equates...

Agere claims lead with 12Gbit/s serdes device.
November 12, 2003... Agere Systems is offering a 12Gbit/s serdes (serialiser/deserialiser) which it claims puts it at the head of the pack for very high speed serial backplane designs. The device, which has been fabbed on TSMC's 90nm low-k process, has been...

Nanosprings put bounce in technology.
November 12, 2003... Inventing a solution in search of a problem, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed piezoelectric nanosprings. Each spring is made of 5-60nm diameter zinc oxide 'wire' and is 500-800 nanometers across and up to...

Big Mac powers into third place.
November 12, 2003... IBM gets personal with health kit Virginia Tech's recently completed Terascale Cluster, made from 1,100 dual-processor G5 Macintosh desktop computers, could be the third most powerful computer on the planet - behind NEC's Earth Simulator...

Surface emitting quantum cacade photonic crystal 8 micron laser.
November 12, 2003... This cross section of the etched structure shows photonic crystal-forming holes extending 4.8[micro]m into the substrate. Scientists at Bell Labs have combined a photonic crystal with a quantum cascade laser to produce a device that emits...

Wanted dead or alive: 90nm FPGAs.
November 12, 2003... Silicon Valley is putting a new twist to the Wild West's practice of bounty hunting with bounty being placed on the head of an IC. Actel's CEO John East is offering $1,500 to any of his workforce who can bring him a 'fully data-sheet...

Hitachi UK lab speeding towards embryonic quantum computers.
November 12, 2003... Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory (HCL) will be able to demonstrate "embryonic quantum computers" in "one to three years", predicts lab head David Williams. HCL, part of Hitachi Europe's corporate R&D operation, is a world leader in advanced...

Single-electron devices poised to become reality.
November 12, 2003... Devices in which data is represented by a handful of electrons are now sufficiently understood to enter production as soon as the appropriate equipment becomes available. That's the view of Dr David Williams, head of the Hitachi Cambridge...

Cirrus defends Wolfson patent lawsuit action.
November 12, 2003... Cirrus Logic has defended its actions in suing Wolfson Microelectronics four days before Wolfson's recent initial public offer (IPO) of shares, and without giving prior notification. "There's a notion that we're just doing this as a stunt to...

Antenova embeds antenna in RF chip: 'It could change the world,' says CEO.
November 12, 2003... Cambridge antenna innovator Antenova is developing a device that can be embedded in an RF chip, simplifying packaging and improving performance over surface mount designs. The company, which recently appointed Dr Su Zhang, formerly in charge of...

Distributor continues to see subdued demand.
November 12, 2003... Distributor Electrocomponents saw its pre-tax profits fall 2.2 per cent for the six months ended September 30, 2003, as demand in its markets remains subdued. The owner of RS Components continues to face depressing market conditions in the UK...

WiFi will grow faster in Europe.
November 12, 2003... WiFi, or 802.11b, will grow faster in Europe than North America, claims US market research firm Insight Research Corporation. "We expect growth of European WiFi services to surpass North American service revenue well before the end of our...

UK start-up Polight shuts down over technology doubts.
November 12, 2003... Polight Technologies, the Cambridge start-up developing materials for holographic data storage (HDS), has closed down. The company experienced difficulties with its technology, based on materials called chalcogenides, and decided developing a...

UK's Radiant in strategy switch to 5.8GHz band.
November 12, 2003... Cambridge-based Radiant Networks has shifted emphasis for its fixed wireless access Meshworks technology away from 26GHz and 28GHz towards the more active market surrounding the unlicensed 5.8GHz band. "26 and 28GHz were the frequencies we...

Single chip Bluetooth wireless transceiver tackles interference.
November 12, 2003... A single chip Bluetooth wireless communications transceiver has been introduced which combines a version 1.2 baseband processor with a direct conversion radio modem and adaptive frequency hopping to combat interference. The result of a...

PCI card opens two Infiniband channels.
November 12, 2003... Embedded computing firm SBS Technologies has developed a PCI mezzanine card that provides two Infiniband communications channels, each operating at 10Gbit/s in both directions. "We combined the performance of Mellanox's second generation...

Design tool firm presses on with consultancy plans.
November 12, 2003... Zuken is pushing ahead with refocusing its business, as it moves away from purely selling PCB design tools towards becoming a design consultancy. "What we have done over the past two years is expand our focus to help our customers analyse their...

DAB firm gets ready for Christmas.
November 12, 2003... London-based RadioScape reckons the lack of availability of DAB digital radios experienced last Christmas will not be repeated. Nigel Oakley, Radioscape's v-p of marketing, believes its RS200 radio module, which allows companies to quickly...

Wideband firm predicts approval of dual-standard at IEEE meeting.
November 12, 2003... Ultra-wideband specialist Artimi expects that this week's IEEE meeting to set a standard for UWB will result in a compromise. The IEEE's 802.15.3a working group is likely to partially ratify two physical layer standards for UWB, said David...

ITU body approves global optical CWDM standard.
November 12, 2003... A global standard for optical fibre coarse wave division multiplexing (CWDM) has been agreed by the ITU standards body. CWDM allows the capacity of optical fibres to be increased. It is seen as a cheaper and simpler option to DWDM (dense...

Socket firm opts for distribution.
November 12, 2003... Emulation Technology has closed its direct sales office in the UK, transferring sales and support to Jacarem, the Chesham cable and connector distributor. "They [Emulation Tech] have decided to close their direct office and we've been appointed...

Government in [pounds sterling]15m initiative to create 100 design jobs in UK.
November 12, 2003... The Government is pumping [pounds sterling]15m into a series of system-on-chip R&D programmes that will create 100 electronics design jobs in universities and companies next year. A group of UK firms has secured the funding. The UK Paradigm...

SEMTA seeks UK executives.
November 12, 2003... A strategy group set up by training agency SEMTA to address the skills needs of the engineering and manufacturing sectors is keen to encourage executives from the electrical and electronics sectors to take part. Further information is available...

Seeba clears up waste directives.
November 12, 2003... Seeba, the South-East Environmental Business Association, is running six free seminars on the Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directives. Seminars will be held between January...

Subs make splash at UK museum.
November 12, 2003... This prototype underwater car was on show at the Science Museum in London. The British-built submarine travels on land at 5mph, carries two passengers and enough oxygen for four days, and operates at depths of 50m. Production models, called...

Meshed mobile devices extend WLAN reach.
November 12, 2003... Surrey-based BPO Solutions has created technology to extend wireless LANs by using mobile devices to create a network. "Our technology is able to extend the current range of WiFi applications through the use of bespoke routing algorithms," said...

US researchers' transistor is 'fastest ever'.
November 12, 2003... Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have made a 509GHz transistor, the fastest yet. "The steady rise in the speed of bipolar transistors has relied largely on the vertical scaling of the epitaxial layer structure to...

Lack of action on EU waste directive threatens electronics competiveness.
November 12, 2003... The competitiveness of the UK electronics industry is threatened by a lack of action by companies to prepare for impending EU legislation on the disposal of electrical waste and hazardous substances, according to the Government. "Companies...

Hotting up ion implant techniques; 08oct03LambdaRouter.jpg.
November 12, 2003... The idea of processing information entirely in the optical domain, rather than using slow, noisy electrons, is one of the long-term themes guiding photonics research. However, not only does a light-based processor appear an ambitious aim, but...

UK design firm Sondrel ready to deliver on European 90nm project 'in two weeks time'.
November 12, 2003... Founded 12 months ago, RTL to GSDII conversion firm Sondrel has already worked on three European 90nm projects, claims co-founder Graham Curren. "We have one taped out, one coming out in two weeks and another shortly after that," he told EW....

Mobiles tuned to digital radio/TV.
November 12, 2003... Cambridge-based Alphamosaic, broadcast equipment firm Vitec and Japanese broadcaster Tokyo FM have teamed up to develop mobile devices which will be able to receive TV and digital radio. Trials are expected to start before the end of the year....

UK firms plan; head-mounted; display project.
November 12, 2003... Edinburgh firm Micro-Emissive Displays has joined with Thales Optics in North Wales and the University of Abertay Dundee in a [pounds sterling]500,000 effort to develop head-mounted displays. The two-year project aims to develop headsets for...

High-speed comms FPGA uses SPI4.2 interfaces.
November 19, 2003... Lattice Semiconductor has introduced an FPGA for high-speed telecoms and datacomms. Called the ORSPI4, its main selling point is two SPI4.2 interfaces in a hard-wired logic block. "There are a million gates in the SPI interfaces, it would...

Scottish programmable logic firm sees FPGA opportunity.
November 19, 2003... Scottish programmable logic specialist Nallatech claims it has a volume opportunity for its FPGA systems for use in satellite basestations. The firm is currently closing a funding round of [pounds sterling]2m. The company says it will use the...