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Technology Stocks : The New Qualcomm - a S&P500 company -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: w molloy who wrote (5516)	1/21/2000 12:17:00 PM
From: gc	Respond to of 13582

You merge with JW? How? Oh, no, it's ugly. Don't mention it.

To: w molloy who wrote (5516)	1/21/2000 1:40:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13582

3Com opening wireless gambit next week By Wylie Wong Staff Writer, CNET News.com January 21, 2000, 4:00 a.m. PT 3Com will ship its first wireless networking products next week, getting started in a market the company sees as vital to its long-term health. Dubbed AirConnect, the technology will allow large companies, schools and medical offices to build wireless networks so that laptop users can roam around their offices and stay connected to the Internet and corporate networks. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company plans to build wireless networking kits for small businesses and homes in the second half of this year, according to executives. "We're going after the mobile professional," said John Drewry, product director for 3Com's wireless division. "As more people use laptops, a lot of them spend more time away from their desks, like conference rooms and cafeterias, and they need to stay connected to the Web and their email." With the launch, 3Com will become the latest networking firm to jump into the wireless market, joining such established players as Lucent Technologies and Proxim as well as newer entries like Cisco Systems, Cabletron Systems and others. 3Com, which created its wireless division last spring, is counting on the new technology to help revitalize a company that has struggled financially in recent times. For the past year, 3Com has targeted wireless and other new markets, such as Internet telephony and high-speed modems, as profits from its analog modems and network adapter cards have slowed. AirConnect comes with notebook PC cards that have radio transmitters and receivers built-in. The technology also requires a wireless hub, affixed to a ceiling or wall, that connects the wireless technology to the regular wired network. The wireless network can run at 11 megabits per second (mbps). 3Com and its wireless competitors envision a future in which users of handheld devices can wirelessly connect to the Internet everywhere--in homes, offices, airports and even hotels. Analyst firm Cahners In-Stat Group predicts the market will grow from $750 million in revenue in 1999 to $2.2 billion in 2004 as prices for the wireless products drop and companies rally around a common standard. Cahners In-Stat analyst Mike Wolf said 3Com has the potential to become a major player because many businesses already own 3Com equipment in their networks. "3Com has the sales channel," he said. "If you look at the network adapter card market, approximately 50 percent are 3Com's. If people move to wireless solutions, 3Com can leverage that success." 3Com said a wireless hub, which will support 63 users, will cost $1,195 each. Wireless PC cards will cost $219 each. The company is also selling a starter pack, consisting of one hub and three PC cards, for $1,795.

To: w molloy who wrote (5516)	1/21/2000 2:24:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 13582

Million-gate ASICs will require hierarchical flow By Michael Santarini EE Times (01/21/00, 1:31 p.m. EST) SANTA CLARA, Calif—Multimillion-gate ASIC design starts are becoming the rule rather than the exception, according to analyst Gary Smith, who delivered the keynote address here at a seminar on accelerating design closure through block based design. Smith, Chief EDA analyst at Dataquest Inc., told an audience Wednesday that 22 percent of ASIC design starts today exceed 1 million gates, with 2 percent exceeding 10 million gates. "These ASICs aren't composed mostly of memory, either," said Smith. "Only about 25 percent of these chips are memory, so that means there is still a whole lot of logic that has to be filled." To fill these gates, said Smith, will require companies to adopt an aggressive hierarchical, block-based design methodology and new tools to go with it. "One of the most upsetting things at the Design Automation Conference last year was that there were these companies pushing tools that prolong flat design methodologies," Smith said. "Luckily those guys went away. Flat is for idiots. It just won't work anymore because these designs are just too big." Smith and five tool vendors, who each gave presentations after the keynote, promoted a hierarchical approach in which designers use new co-design tools just now coming on the market to make system-on-chip-level prototypes of their designs and then move to the tradition RTL to GDSII flow. "You have to start looking at ASIC designs as systems, because that is really what they are," said Smith. Smith said the cutting edge design groups today—and most ASIC design groups by 2002—will partition large designs into manageable blocks, and, like a systems company, assign groups to design the blocks that fall under each design group's area of expertise. Smith also said that cutting-edge ASIC companies and most design groups in the future will use internally developed cores rather than use third-party IP. "They will still license large cores like MIPS and ARM-the big cores, but the rest is coming from behind the firewall," said Smith. Smith also predicted that by the year 2004 the tool flow will consist of three groups. It will start with core communication-based design at the electronic system level. These tools will create RTL Verilog or VHDL for hardware and create another code like C++ for software design. The RTL will be used in an RTL virtual prototyping and verification environment and will be sent to the third phase through an RTL design-planning tool. IC CAD groups will complete the design in the third phase, IC implementation. Not only will they perform physical layout, timing, physical effect and power analysis, but will also do RTL verification and logic synthesis. Following the keynote, tool vendors Aristo, Altius, CynApps, Sente and Simplex gave product pitches on how they see their tools will fit into the next generation block-based design flow.