New contenders in smartcard market

Newsfile No case to answer for NEC NEC of Japan has been cleared of copying microcode developed by Intel for its 8086 and 8088 microprocessors. This ruling was made two trials and more than two years after Intel won the first part of the copyright infringement suit concerning its microcodes. The first finding was that "microcode', because it is software program, is protected by US copyright laws. N EC had held that, as microcodes form part of the microprocessor, they should be classed as hardware which can only be protected with a patent. Intel's counsel, confident after the first ruling, could not, however, prove that NEC was culpable for copying its microcode in the V20 and V30 microprocessors. Intel's case collapsed because it could not claim copyright ownership of the 8086 and 8088 microcodes as it had not insisted that all licensees, which included NEC, marked all chips with an Intel copyright notice. Backing for Futurebus International bus user groups supporting VMEbus and Multibus have proposed basing a single generation bus architecture on work done by the IEEE 896.1 Futurebus working group. Lyman Hevle, Executive Director of the VME International Trade Association (VITA) predicts that 'the next generation VMEbus architecture specification will provide a tiered bus structure that is substantially more powerful and capable than the current VMEbus'. The Multibus Manufacturers Group (MMG)intends to develop a dual-bus structure by pairing Multibus II and VME with extended Futurebus; this will cater for the need for cache-coherent shared multiprocessing at the same time as protecting the longevity of VME and Multibus, the group says. Welcoming these announcements, Paul Borrill, Chairman of the IEEE 896 steering committee, said that he would 'endeavour to incorporate MMG's objectives into the final specification along with those from VlTA and other interested parties'. The IEEEhas plans to extend the standard by adding

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address/data paths, a fast pipelined transfer mode, and the means to support realtime, maintable and high availability systems. New contenders in smartcard market Motorola has announced that four secure microcomputer chips for use in 'smartcard' designs are available generally for the first time. Previously they were only built into cards supplied by BulI-CP8, France. Two chips are implemented in HMOS technology (MC6805SC01 offers 1024 byte of EPROM, 1600 byte of ROMM,and 36 byte of RAM, and S03 with 50% more of each memory) and two in HCMMOS(SC11 and SC21 both offer 6144 byte of RAM to support multifunctional applications and 128 byte of RAM, and 8192 byte of EPROM in the former and 3008 byte of E2pROM in the latter allow the applications designer greater flexibility; the chips are smaller than 20 mm2). Motorola expects that its entry into the smartcard market will encourage new applications such as academic records and pay TV. Memory chips specifically for the card market are also being developed. For example, MCM2814 is a non-volatile 256 X 8 HCMOS device which will continue to work at voltages as low as 3 V. These chips have no processing power but four levels of protection prevent corruption of stored data. New principles behind transistor Texas Instruments has developed what it calls the first true 'quantum effect transistor'. Although still in the lab, it is potentially 1000 times faster and one-hundreth the size of conventional transistors, and is based on the principles of quantum mechanical effects which dominate at 0.02/~m. If the essential components of a transistor are of quantum dimensions, current will only flow at applied voltages that produce matched energy levels in the different materials in the base. Electrons, which resonate when confined to regions the size of their wavelength, can then 'tunnel' across the base. These features allow extremely fast, yet precise, switching.

Ferroelectronic codevelopers A six year codevelopment and licensing agreement has been signed between ferroelectronic developers Ramtron Corporation, CA, USA, and I1-1"Semiconductors, NY, USA, which brings 'ferroelectronic technology to commercial reality', according to Ross Lyndon-James of Ramtron. The agreement involves the joint development of ferroelectronic manufacturing processes for VLSI product applications. Ramtron has also teamed up with TRW, CA, USA, specialist in advanced systems for electronic warfare and avionics, to develop non-volatile ferroelectronic memodes for aerospace and defence applications. A third recent agreement signed with NMB Semiconductor Company, a division of Minebea Company of Japan and a leading worldwide supplier of dynamic RAM, covers codevelopment of 4 Mbit dynamic RAMs. • For details of ferroelectronic history and design see p 290. Worldwide support for RISCs Agreements signed by MIPS Computer Systems, CA, USA with multinationals NEC, Japan and Siemens, FRG offer worldwide support for the manufacture and marketing of MIPS RISCs. These agreements, covering R2000A and R3000 micros and future generations of technology, complete the company's 'Partner Strategy', which has already initiated partnerships with US companies Integrated Device Technology, 1.51 Logic and Performance Semiconductor. 'MIPS is now the only supplier of RISC to have mutliple, high volume sources of pin-compatible RISC microprocessors in each major geographic segment: Europe, Japan and the US', claimed Robert Miller of MIPS. • Fujitsu Microelectronics, Japan and Sun Microsystems have announced that their next generation RISC series, SPARC,will be the first to exceed one cycle per instruction (CPI); the best CPI rating for RISC implementations available today is about 1.25. Sampling is scheduled for the second half of 1989.

Microprocessors and Microsystems