SI Diamond Technology Inc, Houston, Texas has patented what it reckons is the answer to the inadequacies of today’s flat panel displays: the company’s technology is a refinement of the field emission display, which uses an Amorphic Diamond form of carbon film as the cathode; it says the material enables it to make very sharp features on the cathode film and the electrons that excite the phosphors on the anode are drawn from these points, so that very high definition can be achieved; the technique requires only a low voltage, and the company says field emission displays are much easier to make compared with active matrix, consisting only of the metal contact, the carbon film and the electrical contacts to address each pixel, it has a wide viewing angle and full colour because standard cathode ray phosphors can be used, so the panels should cost half as much as active matrix displays, SI Diamond says.
Markham, Ontario-based Geac Computer Corp has signed the Universite du Quebec a Montreal to an agreement to further the development of client-server technology for library applications: Geac’s suite of GEOS2 client products targeted to its Advance and Plus servers will be further enhanced by specific development from the university, which developed two previous generations of library systems for the 11-member Universite du Quebec network, and will now develop server tools and services to promote the support of object-oriented multi-media and full text storage, search, browsing and retrieval of data in a distributed environment.
The Indian government is determined to complete the telecommunications tendering process and award licences by the end of March next year, Communications Minister Sukh Ram told Business Line: he told the paper he would issue necessary clarifications sought by the industry on tender documents in a few days – these questions need more consideration – it is better to be slow than invite allegations of ambiguity later, the minister said.
Atlanta, Georgia-based Software Development Systems Inc is offering a SingleStep Unix-based debugging system for all embedded PowerPC and Motorola Inc ColdFire and 68000 applications, which runs on Sun Microsystems Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co workstations at from $2,000.
Novadyne Computer Systems Inc, the support outfit that is all that is left of what was once McDonnell Douglas Information Systems Inc in the US, is to take over the support and servicing of Axil Computer Inc’s Sparcsystems across the US.
IBM Corp says the Chinese version of OS/2 Warp 3.0 is now available and claims that it is the first simplified Chinese 32-bit operating system: six major Chinese and international computer manufacturers announced plans to support Chinese OS/2 Warp, and 16 Chinese and international software developers announced commitments to develop native OS/2 Warp applications; the Chinese version of OS/2 Warp was localised and is packaged in mainland China, in partnership with the Great Wall Co of Peking, and tested by Tsing Hua University, one of the leading local universities.
Carlsbad, California-based Coded Communications Corp is cutting its workforce by more than half, to 60 from 128 at the end of last year, and discontinuing the VSAT earthstation operations of its ComViSat Inc, whose assets are expected to be liquidated over the next six months; the company will now focus on mobile data communications and aerospace telemetry technologies.
General Automation Inc, Anaheim, California, is dressing up the symmetric multiprocessing PowerPC Escala machines it is taking OEM from Compagnie des Machines Bull SA as Power Advantage servers for the US market: they will run Pick under Unix at from $16,000 to $63,000 as two-to-eight way 75MHz 601 units.
Walker, Richer & Quinn Inc, Seattle, Washington, is adding version 5 of its Reflection networked personal computer-to-Unix software, claiming it will be the first Windows Network File System client with Object Linking & Embedding support; the company has added data
cacheing and File Transfer Protocol directory caching for wireless users, and Mosaic and WinVN newsreader Internet applications; it is out in June and costs from $250.
Hyundai Electronics Co’s Digital Media division has a new MPEG-2 decoder for set-top boxes and video-on-demand applications based on Sun Microsystems Inc’s microSparc; the South Korean licensed microSparc’s Synopsys Inc design database from Sun to build the part.
Odd: L M Ericsson Telefon AB says that that order to supply fibre-optic cable to Romania would earn the company about $20m, and that Siemens AG’s share was about double that, so that the figure of $180m that was given by a Romanian official in Bucharest (CI No 2,648) must be wrong, it told Reuters.
Deutsche Telekom AG has gone to Siemens AG and Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG for software and the RM range of systems for Telekom’s Intelligent Network’s project in a deal worth $40m: Telekom chose the two Siemens companies because of the previous work they have done on intelligent networks.
Next to cash, processor and memory chips are the commodities most widely-targeted by thieves these days, so the fact that Intel Corp’s splendid Zero Insertion Force sockets are Zero Extraction Force as well has persuaded manufacturers to glue the things in, just to be on the safe side (there are plenty of thefts before the things even reach the customer – as Infoworld columnist Robert Cringely discovered when he tried to replace his first-generation Pentium with one that gets its sums right: he reports that the best way to get the old chip out is to disconnect the CPU fan, let the system warm up, turn it off and the chip comes out easily – Pentiums run so hot they melt the glue.
