- Email: [email protected]
Reshuffling the deck
ake the recent US press coverage of GaAs base supercomputers. Vitesse's G a A s is at the heart of the Convex Corp., (Richardson, TX), and Cray's Computer Corp. (CCC) (Colorado Springs, CO.) is running on what came out of GigaBit gogic's (GBL) original lab. We've been waiting for details regarding the Convex machine to emerge officially for some time. Basically the C3800 has a total of 38 G a A s gate arrays in the crossbar, 16 in the I/O bay, 9 on each memory board and 54 on the CPU cards. Vitesse's relatively low power process operates on a -2V power supply and so is playing on silicon's terms.
T
High speed super stakes: Convex C3800 vs CRAY-3 In comparison, the CRAY-3, although based on less sophisticated Dmode technology, is hell bent on speed and has especially interesting 3-dimensional interconnects that, according to G B L founder and futurist Dick Eden, may pave the way for dynamic lower end systems in the future when coupled with advanced multi-chip modules and heat sinks like diamond. The CRAY-3 has 12,000 vertical interconnects in each of its small modules, each of which is 4 x 4 x 1/4 inch thick and four of those modules is a processor, of which there are 16. You do the math, the market will do the comparisons. No matter how you slice it, it's still GaAs, and if the hard ball marketeers do their job effectively, a considerable number of GaAs units will be required in
Reshuffling The Deck by Jo Ann McDonald, US Correspondent Just when GaAs was beginning to mainstream to the point of routine predictability, manufacturability and insertability - - all those "abilities" that denote maturity and acceptance - - here comes another wave of what some might conclude to be further instability. Don't be fooled. The plethora of recent activity within the III-V industry might better be depicted as simply reshuffling a carefully stacked deck. follow-ons and smaller machines. The most difficult challenge ahead may be to resist believing one's own press. You may ask if there will be enough merchant lab available for proper second sourcing.'? US supercomputer manufacturers aren't likely to be comfortable with a rival like Fujitsu, and it isn't likely that TriQuint and Vitesse could cooperate to that extent. However, systems companies such as AT&T, TI and Rockwell could lean their way if the money is on the table. Overall, there's still enough lab capacity to easily supply the universe with GaAs, but it doesn't hurt to plan for tomorrow.
Triquint adds Gazelle TriQuint continues to add aces to its hand, using them to bolster its digital offering. M a y 13th marked the signing of a definitive agreement to add Gazelle Microelectronics (Santa Clara, CA) to the recent merger of TriQuint (Beaverton, OR) and GigaBit Logic (Camarillo, CA) which was announced in January. That takes TriQuint's revenue over $40M in 1991, but how the corn-
bined management team sorts itself out is still in question. A.J. "Bert" Moyer is temporary CEO with AI Patz and Spencer Brown as Ex.VPs. An active search for just the right leader is underway and that person will get to call the shots, along with the news evenman board. Gazelle and TriQuint have worked closely together for some years, so the technology transition shouldn't be too difficult. Nobody's very sure how the personnel will sort out, however, or if everything will remain in Santa Clara. One thing's sure, with the addition of Gazelle, there's now a collective of awesome technical GaAs expertise in both the analog and digital realm, surely stacking the deck in TriQuint's favour.
Diamonds - girl's b e s t friends On the supply side, GaAs device people are moving around to help others solve some nasty problems, like heat dissipation. Vitesse founder AI Joseph and GBL founder Dick Eden, for example, are both consulting for Norton, which
has been involved in industrial diamond applications for more than a century. A1 Semicon West 1 learned how Joseph and Eden helped introduce Norton to the electronics world with a new lox~ pressure technique for growing large area diamond fihns. For those with long memories, Norton was the original investor in Vitesse when Joseph first put the company together. Diamond []hn's excellent thermal properties make it mcreasingl} attractive as a heat sink. ( s e d as a substrate, the die is mounted directly on the diamond as if it were alumina, or whatever. The growth of diamond film potential was minuscule until the necessar} investment was made by Norton and other companies such as Sumitomo Electric USA in Los Angeles, which has an impressive CVD-diamond operation, and Crystallume in Menlo Park, CA. All three seem to be working in a similar direction. Newcomer Norton has evidently scaled up the timeframe and produced substrate sized material at a reasonable price. With two good GaAs ideas men on their team, the development timeframe gained may well be about a year. Norton is located in Northboro, MA., tel: (508) 393 6600 with I)r. Kim Bigelow, Director of Technology at the diamond film hehn. Sumitomo Electric USA's CVl)-diamond operation is headed by Izumi N a k a m u r a (Tel/fax: 213 782 0227 0211)and Crystallume's John Herb authored a diamond film article in the previous issue of TFR, and can be contacted on Tel/fax: (415) 324 9681 / 2958.
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DARPA o p t o centers Despite the chosen terms, there aren't any actual "centers" because D A R P A prefers to see more for their money than bricks and mortar, but Congress' 1989 allocation of $12M was matched by internal DARPA funds when not just one but three powerful consortia proved worthy. Much of the credit is due to the strong up-front alliances of each term with industry, for evolving things to the merchant and commercial sector ASAP are the ground rules of any R&D game. Although originally funded in 1989, the multi-year programs in optoelectronics and photonics (two areas of critical interest to the DoD) haven't been public knowledge until recently. The centers are less than a year into their collective efforts and the three teams will report initial results this June, which will be reported in our next issue. Teaming is as follows: The Univ. of Southern California (USC with Prof. Steve Forest as lead) is teamed with UCLA, Columbia, Kent State and MIT. Cornell's team has three major players, including UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego, with a small part going to DARPA's principal investigator (PL) at Syracuse. The third team is led by University of New Mexico with Cal Tech, Stanford, Lincoln Labs and Sandia National Labs. Sven Roosild, Deputy Director of DARPA's Microelectronics Technology Office reports that the centers definitely encompass much of the good university base in the USA. "The vital criteria are twofold. One is that, since this
is Congressional money, the teams provide a mechanism to continue the funding through industrial sources and secondly, that they transfer the technology to industry in a timely manner so that we get some benefit out of this research." Consequently, the industrial sector is heavily behind this effort, which could well be an unprecedented US industry/research wide teaming effort. Clearly this has a large 6.1 component, (i.e. basic theoretical research) but it's certainly getting into the 6.2 (i.e. more developmental) arena because the government wants them to go far enough in their development so that industry will have some products from which to select. All participants have formed connections with industry and have their advisory boards established with industrial partners on them. The winners had large numbers of letters from industry endorsing the proposal, essentially agreeing to cooperate and help make sure these centers come up with useful products, so it's coupled much more with industry than is normally the case in a program of this type. Generically, the products to be focused are literally anything to do with optoelectronics. "We have nothing to say about that point," reports Roosild. "We write the evaluation criteria, but Congress is the entity that decides what they want." That precise Congressional language goes far in explaining what may appear to some international observers to be the setting of US industrial policy .. something President Bush vehemently declares he does not want to do. One can't underscore enough to
observers the apparent contradictions within the US government, at least as they relate to determining technological and industrial policy; Congress and the Administration are often at odds. When it comes to actual funding, Congress wins. Here's what the Congressional language put forth in 1989 when mandating the program: "The DoD seeks to increase its commitment to the optoelectronics and photonics sector of our defense technology base. The goal is to promote the university program with demonstrated capabilities for pursuing this research on a comprehensive basis to meet DoD needs. The program should attempt to maximize the involvement of industry and government laboratories in a synergistic, overall effort. "Under this program, the center will conduct R&D in materials and devices, in the areas of optoelectronics and photonics. Proposals should address three issues: establishment issues, including a comprehensive assessment of the materials and devices technology in these areas, in view of future defense requirements and technology capability..." When asking Sven Roosild if this marriage of industry and research from the outset comes with an intent of increasing US competitiveness, he replied, "That's clearly a motivation in some form. The characteristics of opto are such that DoD could make use of a lot of it if available. We tend to lever commercial business as we have always done in the electronics area. We'll be happy if a commercial base develops for these (resulting opto and photonic products), which is really the only way we can afford it anyway.
The only place where we pay the full freight is when we develop airplanes. Usually D o D has gotten used to getting its electronics subsidized because of the large commercial base. I think that in photonics we expect to do the same."
W h o ' s w h o at DARPA For D A R P A followers, Dr. Vic Reis is now permanent director of that well respected D o D advanced technology agency. Reis was Craig Field's Deputy, replacing Fields last year when he went to MCC. The newly promoted Director of DARPA's Microelectronics Technology Office is Dr. Arati Prabhakar with Sven Roosild as her Deputy. The two are well-known in the GaAs industry and appreciated as two key catalysts. Commenting on their reversal of roles, Roosild notes, "She's very good at dealing with Congress and upper management, she's keen and likes to think ahead. That's what a director needs to do. I'm more the implementor." Program Manager for the Optoelectronics Materials Centers is Dr. Andrew Yang, who works for Sven Roosild. In June, the Phase II MIMIC program winners will be announced. MIMIC is now under the Electronic Systems Technology Office, headed by Lance Glasser. Eliot Cohen remains M I M I C Program Director. Jo Ann McDonald
T
High speed super stakes: Convex C3800 vs CRAY-3 In comparison, the CRAY-3, although based on less sophisticated Dmode technology, is hell bent on speed and has especially interesting 3-dimensional interconnects that, according to G B L founder and futurist Dick Eden, may pave the way for dynamic lower end systems in the future when coupled with advanced multi-chip modules and heat sinks like diamond. The CRAY-3 has 12,000 vertical interconnects in each of its small modules, each of which is 4 x 4 x 1/4 inch thick and four of those modules is a processor, of which there are 16. You do the math, the market will do the comparisons. No matter how you slice it, it's still GaAs, and if the hard ball marketeers do their job effectively, a considerable number of GaAs units will be required in
Reshuffling The Deck by Jo Ann McDonald, US Correspondent Just when GaAs was beginning to mainstream to the point of routine predictability, manufacturability and insertability - - all those "abilities" that denote maturity and acceptance - - here comes another wave of what some might conclude to be further instability. Don't be fooled. The plethora of recent activity within the III-V industry might better be depicted as simply reshuffling a carefully stacked deck. follow-ons and smaller machines. The most difficult challenge ahead may be to resist believing one's own press. You may ask if there will be enough merchant lab available for proper second sourcing.'? US supercomputer manufacturers aren't likely to be comfortable with a rival like Fujitsu, and it isn't likely that TriQuint and Vitesse could cooperate to that extent. However, systems companies such as AT&T, TI and Rockwell could lean their way if the money is on the table. Overall, there's still enough lab capacity to easily supply the universe with GaAs, but it doesn't hurt to plan for tomorrow.
Triquint adds Gazelle TriQuint continues to add aces to its hand, using them to bolster its digital offering. M a y 13th marked the signing of a definitive agreement to add Gazelle Microelectronics (Santa Clara, CA) to the recent merger of TriQuint (Beaverton, OR) and GigaBit Logic (Camarillo, CA) which was announced in January. That takes TriQuint's revenue over $40M in 1991, but how the corn-
bined management team sorts itself out is still in question. A.J. "Bert" Moyer is temporary CEO with AI Patz and Spencer Brown as Ex.VPs. An active search for just the right leader is underway and that person will get to call the shots, along with the news evenman board. Gazelle and TriQuint have worked closely together for some years, so the technology transition shouldn't be too difficult. Nobody's very sure how the personnel will sort out, however, or if everything will remain in Santa Clara. One thing's sure, with the addition of Gazelle, there's now a collective of awesome technical GaAs expertise in both the analog and digital realm, surely stacking the deck in TriQuint's favour.
Diamonds - girl's b e s t friends On the supply side, GaAs device people are moving around to help others solve some nasty problems, like heat dissipation. Vitesse founder AI Joseph and GBL founder Dick Eden, for example, are both consulting for Norton, which
has been involved in industrial diamond applications for more than a century. A1 Semicon West 1 learned how Joseph and Eden helped introduce Norton to the electronics world with a new lox~ pressure technique for growing large area diamond fihns. For those with long memories, Norton was the original investor in Vitesse when Joseph first put the company together. Diamond []hn's excellent thermal properties make it mcreasingl} attractive as a heat sink. ( s e d as a substrate, the die is mounted directly on the diamond as if it were alumina, or whatever. The growth of diamond film potential was minuscule until the necessar} investment was made by Norton and other companies such as Sumitomo Electric USA in Los Angeles, which has an impressive CVD-diamond operation, and Crystallume in Menlo Park, CA. All three seem to be working in a similar direction. Newcomer Norton has evidently scaled up the timeframe and produced substrate sized material at a reasonable price. With two good GaAs ideas men on their team, the development timeframe gained may well be about a year. Norton is located in Northboro, MA., tel: (508) 393 6600 with I)r. Kim Bigelow, Director of Technology at the diamond film hehn. Sumitomo Electric USA's CVl)-diamond operation is headed by Izumi N a k a m u r a (Tel/fax: 213 782 0227 0211)and Crystallume's John Herb authored a diamond film article in the previous issue of TFR, and can be contacted on Tel/fax: (415) 324 9681 / 2958.
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DARPA o p t o centers Despite the chosen terms, there aren't any actual "centers" because D A R P A prefers to see more for their money than bricks and mortar, but Congress' 1989 allocation of $12M was matched by internal DARPA funds when not just one but three powerful consortia proved worthy. Much of the credit is due to the strong up-front alliances of each term with industry, for evolving things to the merchant and commercial sector ASAP are the ground rules of any R&D game. Although originally funded in 1989, the multi-year programs in optoelectronics and photonics (two areas of critical interest to the DoD) haven't been public knowledge until recently. The centers are less than a year into their collective efforts and the three teams will report initial results this June, which will be reported in our next issue. Teaming is as follows: The Univ. of Southern California (USC with Prof. Steve Forest as lead) is teamed with UCLA, Columbia, Kent State and MIT. Cornell's team has three major players, including UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego, with a small part going to DARPA's principal investigator (PL) at Syracuse. The third team is led by University of New Mexico with Cal Tech, Stanford, Lincoln Labs and Sandia National Labs. Sven Roosild, Deputy Director of DARPA's Microelectronics Technology Office reports that the centers definitely encompass much of the good university base in the USA. "The vital criteria are twofold. One is that, since this
is Congressional money, the teams provide a mechanism to continue the funding through industrial sources and secondly, that they transfer the technology to industry in a timely manner so that we get some benefit out of this research." Consequently, the industrial sector is heavily behind this effort, which could well be an unprecedented US industry/research wide teaming effort. Clearly this has a large 6.1 component, (i.e. basic theoretical research) but it's certainly getting into the 6.2 (i.e. more developmental) arena because the government wants them to go far enough in their development so that industry will have some products from which to select. All participants have formed connections with industry and have their advisory boards established with industrial partners on them. The winners had large numbers of letters from industry endorsing the proposal, essentially agreeing to cooperate and help make sure these centers come up with useful products, so it's coupled much more with industry than is normally the case in a program of this type. Generically, the products to be focused are literally anything to do with optoelectronics. "We have nothing to say about that point," reports Roosild. "We write the evaluation criteria, but Congress is the entity that decides what they want." That precise Congressional language goes far in explaining what may appear to some international observers to be the setting of US industrial policy .. something President Bush vehemently declares he does not want to do. One can't underscore enough to
observers the apparent contradictions within the US government, at least as they relate to determining technological and industrial policy; Congress and the Administration are often at odds. When it comes to actual funding, Congress wins. Here's what the Congressional language put forth in 1989 when mandating the program: "The DoD seeks to increase its commitment to the optoelectronics and photonics sector of our defense technology base. The goal is to promote the university program with demonstrated capabilities for pursuing this research on a comprehensive basis to meet DoD needs. The program should attempt to maximize the involvement of industry and government laboratories in a synergistic, overall effort. "Under this program, the center will conduct R&D in materials and devices, in the areas of optoelectronics and photonics. Proposals should address three issues: establishment issues, including a comprehensive assessment of the materials and devices technology in these areas, in view of future defense requirements and technology capability..." When asking Sven Roosild if this marriage of industry and research from the outset comes with an intent of increasing US competitiveness, he replied, "That's clearly a motivation in some form. The characteristics of opto are such that DoD could make use of a lot of it if available. We tend to lever commercial business as we have always done in the electronics area. We'll be happy if a commercial base develops for these (resulting opto and photonic products), which is really the only way we can afford it anyway.
The only place where we pay the full freight is when we develop airplanes. Usually D o D has gotten used to getting its electronics subsidized because of the large commercial base. I think that in photonics we expect to do the same."
W h o ' s w h o at DARPA For D A R P A followers, Dr. Vic Reis is now permanent director of that well respected D o D advanced technology agency. Reis was Craig Field's Deputy, replacing Fields last year when he went to MCC. The newly promoted Director of DARPA's Microelectronics Technology Office is Dr. Arati Prabhakar with Sven Roosild as her Deputy. The two are well-known in the GaAs industry and appreciated as two key catalysts. Commenting on their reversal of roles, Roosild notes, "She's very good at dealing with Congress and upper management, she's keen and likes to think ahead. That's what a director needs to do. I'm more the implementor." Program Manager for the Optoelectronics Materials Centers is Dr. Andrew Yang, who works for Sven Roosild. In June, the Phase II MIMIC program winners will be announced. MIMIC is now under the Electronic Systems Technology Office, headed by Lance Glasser. Eliot Cohen remains M I M I C Program Director. Jo Ann McDonald