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Nikkei Electronics

December 05 2005 Issue

Keyword .  .  .  p. 10

Remuneration system for home taping

Inside “What’s In” .  .  .  p. 30

Breaking Down the Xbox 360

What’s New .  .  .  p. 32

• Software Development Tools for “Cell” Can Be Used
• New Battery Materials from the 46th Battery Symposium
• ISSCC2006 Preview: The Advanced Program Is Released
• Using Inkjet Technology, SiPs Can Be Printed at Low Cost
• Intel and Micron Form a New NAND Manufacturing Company
  
  

Leading Trends

Taiwan Transforms into a Base for LSI Development.  .  .  p. 51
Taiwanese manufacturers are steadily expanding their LSI design capability.  Fabless companies with rising earnings keep emerging.  Behind this is a unified effort by government, industry and academia to train up engineers.

Veins Emerge as a Dark Horse Candidate to Replace Fingerprints for Biometrics .  .  .  p. 61
Vein authentication is turning out to be the dark horse of biometrics—the authentication of individuals based on characteristics of the human body.  Through miniaturization of modules, vein authentication is starting to penetrate the market pioneered by fingerprint authentication.

Cover Story

Match Time for the Living Room PC .  .  .  p. 87
Will personal computers be able to shed their singular role as an information tool for individuals?  
PCs are coming to a juncture and the scene for the foray into a new market is the living room.  Surely this time around the market for PCs that connect to large-screen televisions and which the whole family can share is going to get off its feet.  
It will require the know-how of home appliance manufacturers.


(Part 1) Scenario
Taking on high-definition content to stay ahead of digital home appliances

(Part 2) Realization technology
The key to the living room lies in encoding, processing capability and operability

Interview

Agilent Technologies, Inc.’s President and CEO, Bill Sullivan: “We Are Ready as a Pure Play”.  .  .  p. 105

Tech Tale

STAR WARS the Digital Cinema Revolution (Part 9): Lucasfilm Version 2.0 .  .  .  p. 108

Guest Paper

Implementing a Change in Firmware to Create an “AV Mode” for HDDs .  .  .  p. 113
Sony Corp. has developed CYBERCAPTURE technology for installing AV data processing functions on hard disk drives (HDD).  The first goal will be utilization of the technology in portable devices, namely digital cameras, camcorders and mobile phones.  The main features are the ability to reduce the workload of device microcontrollers and memory usage, and being able to improve the effective data transfer rate of HDDs.  
Sony is planning a spring 2006 release in Japan of a 1-inch HDD for the general consumer that incorporates this technology.  CYBERCAPTURE technology is not specific to compact HDDs and can be applied also to 3.5-inch and other HDDs.  For instance, Sony maintains the technology would be effective even for recorders of multiple HDTV streams.  
In this article, the developers themselves explain the benefits of incorporating this technology into HDDs and offer details of the functions.

NETs Buyers’ Guide

Prototyping Chips .  .  .  p. 120
Services for carrying out low-cost trial fabrication of a small number (between 5 and 100) of chips, called shuttle services, are attracting attention.  
Overseas in fact, successive major silicon foundries, and large semiconductor manufacturers with a history of supplying high-performance integrated circuits, have launched such services.  Low-cost trial fabrication of a small number of chips is possible as mask expenses and other chip development costs can be reduced to between 1/5 and 1/15 of current costs by building circuits for multiple customers on one semiconductor wafer.  
To the R&D teams of equipment and semiconductor manufacturers, who while confident in their technological capability have their financial limits, and to the design ventures, universities and research institutions, the arrangement deals them a powerful hand to play in verifying their own circuits and concepts on real silicon.

NETs Seminar

Usability Seminar for Embedded Device Engineers (Part 2): Maintaining Consistency Between Operation and Display .  .  .  p. 130
The second installment in our series introducing methods for improving the usability of embedded devices explains the importance of consistency between operation and display so that users are able to learn quickly how to operate devices and to use them smoothly.  
We look at the separation of functions, the format of screen transitions during operation, and screen layout.

Viewing High Speed Signal Design in Design Case Studies .  .  .  p. 138
Transmission of high-speed signals is said to complicate circuit board design, but if you cover the right areas you can design a transmission circuit that maintains the quality of even 10Gb/s signals.  
This article uses specific examples to explain how to match characteristic impedance and control signal attenuation when designing printed circuit boards.

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Keyword:	10
News Ranking	12
Inside “What’s In”:	30
What's New:	32
Selected Shorts:	43
Leading Trends:	51
Cover Story:	87
Interview:	105
Tech Tale:	108
Guest Paper:	113
NETs:	120
Calendar:	188
From the Readers:	192
From the Editors:	193