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Nikkei Electronics

July 03 2006 Issue

Keyword .  .  .  p. 10

digital single-lens reflex camera

What’s New .  .  .  p. 38

• Aiming for Home High Speed Wireless Communications, CMOS Moves into the Millimeter Wave Area
• Will the IEEE802.20 Next Generation Mobile Wireless Technology Standard Disappear?
• Nichia Creates the World’s First Practical White LED with a Luminous Efficiency of 100lm/W
• A NOR Flash Memory that Can Write at 100MB/s Is Developed
• Toyota’s New Environmental Strategy
• Marlin Starts to Move to Commercialization within the Year
• Japan’s METI Announces a Survey Report of the Embedded Device Industry
  
  

Leading Trends

Li-Ion Batteries Get Closer to Use as Rechargeable Batteries in Hybrid Cars.  .  .  p. 59
Hybrid vehicles employing lithium ion rechargeable batteries, which are more powerful and last longer than the current mainstream nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, are expected on the market during the latter half of 2008.  A few issues have surfaced, however, including how to pitch the merits to consumers and whether or not the US market will respond in favor.

Due to HDMI and Serial ATA, Static Electricity Preventative Measures Come Under Pressure.  .  .  p. 67
The spread of high-speed interfaces with signal frequencies exceeding 500MHz is complicating measures for preventing static electricity.  This is due to the growing significance of parasitic capacitance in existing electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection devices, which causes waveform distortion.  New devices are now emerging to address the issue.

Cover Story

Going Beyond Full Color: HDMI Goes to 48 Bit Color.  .  .  p. 93
The emergence of video transmission interfaces that can handle 36-bit color is breaking down the commonly held belief that 24-bit color depth is adequate for color representation.  The number of colors transmittable will rise dramatically from around 17 million to approximately 69 billion colors.  Developers of video-handling devices have found themselves assigned a new target.


Part 1        Industry Trends.  .  .  p. 96
Evolving interfaces to enable a new dimension for color representation

Part 2        Display Technology.  .  .  p. 104
Multi-gradation LCD panels racing towards 10 bits per color

An Overview of the Standards.  .  .  p. 112
Next-generation standards competing over PCs and AV equipment

Interview

National Semiconductor’s Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Semiconductor Industry Association’s President Brian Halla: “The Key to the Next Barrier of Trillion Dollars Is for Semiconductors to Support Sensibility”.  .  .  p.119

Tech Tale

The 30 Year Struggle for Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (Final): “One Day the Word ‘Perpendicular’ Disappeared”.  .  .  p. 122
Nikkei Electronics on May 9, 2005 featured an article, “Perpendicular Recording Shows a Path to a HDD with 500Gbit/inch2 by 2010”.  It claimed that a high recording density was achievable by combining the enormous potential of perpendicular recording with new technology revealed at the Intermag 2005 international conference.

Guest Paper

Building an LSI with Protein: Clear Electrodes Can Also Be Prototyped Using Thin-Film Formation Technology.  .  .  p. 127
Cambrios Technologies Corp. has developed a technology that utilizes the self-assembling phenomenon of proteins to create semiconductors and thin films bearing microscopic patterns. 
When a specific metal element and inorganic compound react with a protein which has an affinity for those materials, under certain conditions the self assembly of the protein methodically allows the metal element and inorganic compound to align with one another.  In practical terms, this can be applied, for example, in the LSI patterning process to selectively deposit patterned layers in the desired locations without having to use masks or lithography. 
The technology also enables the deposition of film in three-dimensional structures, which has proven difficult using conventional methods.  Manufacturing costs could also be potentially reduced as the reaction occurs in solution at low temperature, meaning vacuum equipment and facilities for generating high temperatures would be required in fewer processes. 
Here we receive a report on the principles of this technology and the results of testing on the transparent electrode film trialed through application of those principles.

NETs Buyers’ Guide

Touch Panel.  .  .  p. 136
Touch panels are employed on top of displays, on LCD panels for example.  Applications include the operation of devices by touching switches displayed on a screen, and the input of hand-written characters and pictures by reading the path of a finger or a pen as it moves over the display. 
They are used in many of the devices we come across in our daily lives; large panels are found in automated teller machines, automatic ticket vending machines and PCs, while small panels are employed in car navigation systems, game consoles, PDAs, copiers and some mobile phones.  Recently, an increasing number of mobile phones produced for the Chinese market include touch panels for easy Chinese character input. 
More panels are likely to be used in PCs, too, in addition to conventional tablet PCs, as pen input functions are being expanded for the upcoming Windows Vista operating system to be released by Microsoft Corp. in 2007.

NETs Seminar

The Past and Future of Imaging Elements (2nd Half): The Evolution of CMOS Sensors.  .  .  p. 142
This is the second installment of our series in which we clarify the details of a lecture given by Takao Kuroda, who has experience working for an image sensor manufacturer in Japan on the development of charge-coupled devices (CCDs) and complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology sensors.  CMOS sensors managed to overcome the foremost issue of noise and this installment explains how that was achieved and offers up future possibilities.

When Crystal Oscillators Won’t Work (Part 2): For Stable Operation the “Safety Factor” Must Be Secured.  .  .  p. 148
A crystal oscillator is a small device employed in most electronics to provide highly accurate clock signals.  Stable operation of the device, however, requires the oscillator circuit to meet certain conditions.  We use case examples in which operation of crystal oscillators became unstable to illustrate the causes and solutions of the problems.

The Latest on Quantum Encryption (Part 3): The Strange Encryption that Intertwines Quantum Particles.  .  .  p. 152
Quantum cryptography makes use of the peculiar properties of quantum mechanics, as typified by the “uncertainty principle,” to securely distribute key data.  The third installment in this series explains the principles behind the E91 cryptographic protocol, which uses a different quantum property—“quantum entanglement”—to the BB84 protocol introduced in the last installment.

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Keyword:	10
News Ranking	12
What's New:	38
Selected Shorts:	51
Leading Trends:	59
Cover Story:	93
Interview:	119
Tech Tale:	122
Guest Paper:	127
NETs:	136
Calendar:	228
From the Readers:	232
From the Editors:	233