------------------------------------------------------
***Pioneer Digital Technologies and Concurrent Computer Corporation Agree to Develop Video-On-Demand System (November 30)
Concurrent Computer and Pioneer Digital Technologies announced today that they have agreed to develop an integrated end-to-end Video-On-Demand (VOD) system based upon Concurrent's MediaHawk Video Server and cable backoffice software suite and Pioneer's Voyager Digital Set-top Terminal and Passport Digital Navigation and Applications Software Suite. In addition, set-top boxes (STBs) from other suppliers providing "Pegasus" compliant DSTT will be supported.
Concurrent's MediaHawk Video Servers multiprocessor server systems optimized for the requirements of interactive VOD applications. MediaHawk Video Servers also meet cable system operators' operational requirements with an integrated cable backoffice software suite. The cable backoffice software suite satisfies the requirements for content management, order management, content provider royalty payments, legacy billing system interfaces, and subscriber and billing management. Data mining applications can be integrated to support subscriber demographics and market analysis. In addition, the cable backoffice software suite provides a consistent platform and interface for electronic commerce applications which increases the range of interactive digital applications available to cable subscribers and revenues to cable system operators. MediaHawk Video Servers and the cable backoffice software suite can be deployed in either a centralized or distributed cable system network architecture to support either small or large cable systems with either high-bandwidth or limited bandwidth availability.
***Perceptronics and Shout Join for Collaborative 3D on the Internet (November 30)
Perceptronics announced that it has worked together with Shout Interactive to install an operational demonstration of its InterGame platform for Internet Collaborative 3D.
The demonstration is called "Head of the River Challenge," and involves a simulated rowing race between two 2-man shells over a river course. The rowers, shells and racecourse, including lanes, scenery and onlookers, are shown in detailed, realistic 3D. Each player controls one "rower avatar" from his own computer, connected at present via a local area network. The player uses a single computer key to command the rower's power strokes and return strokes, and views the team's actions along with the opponents' in 3D perspective. The two players "rowing" together in a shell must coordinate their individual strokes in terms of timing and power to move the shell forward straight and fast. Skill is involved, and an auxiliary stroke display helps the players learn the proper teamwork. Eventually, the players will be able to access the game from any Internet-connected site.
http://www.shoutinteractive.com
http://www.perceptronics.com
***NVIDIA Files S-1/A with SEC
We provide here extractions for the recent NVIDIA filing. This is now available at the SEC EDGAR.
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Hambrecht & Quist are making the offering.
For the 9 month period to October 25, 1998 to company reported the following:
Revenue Total .............$92,700
Gross profit (loss)...........25,300
Operating income (loss). (3,900)
Net income (loss).......... (3,532)The Company experienced difficulties commencing volume production of the RIVA128ZX graphics processor in March 1998 and the RIVA TNT graphics processor in July 1998. These difficulties were primarily due to yield problems that resulted in lower than expected revenues and higher manufacturing costs during the quarter ended July 28, 1998.
As of October 25, 1998, the Company's accumulated deficit was approximately $17.1 million. Although the Company generated net income in the quarters ended October 25, 1998 and December 31,1997, it incurred significant losses in the quarters ended April 28, 1998 and July 26, 1998, in the first three quarters of fiscal 1997 and in each quarter of its prior fiscal years.
The litigation with SGI, S3 and 3Dfx has resulted, and the Company expects that it will continue to result, in significant expense to the Company and divert the efforts of the Company's technical and management personnel, whether or not such litigation results in a favorable determination for the Company. In the event of an adverse result in any suit, the Company could be required to do one or more of the following: pay substantial damages (including treble damages); permanently cease the manufacture, use and sale ofany infringing products; expend significant resources to develop non-infringing technology; or obtain a license from SGI, S3 or 3Dfx for any infringing technology. Any of these suits could result in limitations on the Company's ability to market its products, delays and costs associated with redesigning its products or payments of license fees or other payments to SGI,S3 or 3Dfx, the occurrence of which would have a material adverse effect on the Company's business, financial condition and results of operations.
Sales to STB and Diamond accounted for 63% and 31%, respectively, of the Company's total revenue in 1997, and sales to STB, Diamond, and Creative accounted for 40%, 28% and 12%, respectively, of the Company's total revenue in the nine months ended October 25, 1998.
As of October 25, 1998, the Company had184 employees as compared to 71 employees as of September 28, 1997, and the Company expects that the number of its employees will increase substantially over the next 12 months. The Company's financial and management controls, reporting systems and procedures are very limited and will need to be upgrade significantly. Although some new controls, systems and procedures have been implemented, the Company's future growth, if any, will depend on its ability to continue to implement and improve operational, financial and management information and control systems on a timely basis, as well as its ability to maintain effective cost controls, and any failure to do so effectively could have a material adverse effect on the Company's business, financial condition or results of operations.
During 1998, the Company experienced difficulties in achieving volume production at TSMC of the Company's RIVA128ZX and RIVA TNT graphics processors.
Royalty revenue from sales of the RIVA128 graphics processor by ST represented approximately 6% of the Company's total revenue in the nine months ended September 30, 1997 and royalty revenue from sales of the RIVA128 graphics processor and a derivative of the RIVA128ZX graphics processor represented 7% of the Company's total revenue in the nine months ended October 25, 1998. The Company expects royalty revenue from ST to decrease as a percentage of total revenue.
During the quarter ended October 25, 1998, both the Chief Financial Officer of the Company and the Vice President of Operations left the Company.
The Company has 22 patents issued and 18 patent applications pending in the United States. Such issued patents have expiration dates from May 2015 to November 2016.
In addition, the Company from time to time has received notices alleging that the Company has infringed patents or other intellectual property rights owned by third parties. ST has certain patent licenses that in some cases may allow ST to manufacture the Company's products without infringing third-party patents. As the Company's products are manufactured by TSMC or other manufacturers, such licenses will no longer benefit the Company and therefore the risk of a third-party claim of patent infringement against the Company will increase.
As a result of such contractual restrictions and the provisions of Rule 144 and 701, the Restricted Shares will be available for sale in the public market as follows: (i) 147,500 shares will be eligible for immediate sale on the date of this Prospectus;(ii) 4,852,500 shares will be eligible for sale 90 days after the date of this Prospectus; (iii) 17,727,849 shares will be eligible for sale upon expiration of lock-up agreements 180 days after the date of this Prospectus and (iv) the remaining shares will be eligible for sale from time to time thereafter upon expiration of the Company's right to repurchase such shares.
Diamond accounted for 86% and 82% of the Company's total revenue in 1995 and 1996, respectively. Sales to STB and Diamond accounted for 63% and 31%, respectively, of the Company's total revenue in1997, and sales to STB, Diamond, and Creative accounted for 40%, 28%, and 12%,respectively, of the Company's total revenue in the nine months ended October 25, 1998. The number of potential customers for the Company's products is limited, and the Company expects that sales to Creative, Diamond and STB will continue to account for a substantial portion of its revenue for the foreseeable future.
The Company had a gross profit of $631,000 in the nine months ended September 30, 1997 compared to a gross profit of $25.3 million in the nine months ended October 25, 1998.Excluding royalty revenue, gross margin on product revenue improved from 6% in the nine months ended September 30, 1997 to 22% in the nine months ended October 25, 1998 due to sales of the higher margin RIVA TNT graphics processor and lower costs of the RIVA128 graphics processor in the nine months ended October 25, 1998. Although the Company achieved substantial growth in gross profit and gross margin from the 1997 period to the nine months ended October25, 1998, the Company does not expect to sustain these rates of growth in future periods.
The Company has a $5.0 million credit facility. Borrowings under the line of credit carry interest at prime rate plus 1% and are due in March 1999. As of October 25, 1998, the Company had borrowed $5.0 million against the line of credit.
The Company has announced its intention to deliver a new generation of 3D graphics processors in calendar 1999 that will be based on a .25 micron manufacturing process.
The Company has substantially increased its engineering and technical resources and has 97 full-time employees engaged in research and development. Expenditures for research and development after adjustments for contract funding were $2.4 million, $1.2 million and $7.1 million in 1995, 1996 and 1997, respectively.
In July and August 1998, the Company's three largest customers, Creative, Diamond, and STB, purchased an aggregate of $11.0 million of the Company's convertible subordinated non-interest bearing notes.
A big loser in this offering is CIBC Oppenheimer who was dropped from the earlier filing.
The company continues to have a hard time managing its yield problems. Having a 22% gross margin and not achieving profitability is not a good sign.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045810/0001012870-98-003021.txt
***Hitachi Announces Storage for Clustered Server Environments (November 30)
Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has announced the Hitachi Freedom Storage 5800. The Freedom 5800 is offered for use with clustered servers in Win NT, UNIX, and NetWare environments.
The Freedom 5800 provides the high levels of performance and availability required to support clustered servers located inside or outside the "glass house" data center. It is the newest member of a family of "SAN-ready" subsystems to reach the marketplace and was designed for use in enterprise wide Storage Area Networks (SANs) incorporating the high-speed Fibre Channel interconnection technology.
The Freedom 5800 is available now, complete system prices range from $45,000 to $140,000. It is offered in rack-mountable and cabinet models, and uses Hitachi's 3.5 inch, 18GB disk drives, and can be configured to provide a maximum usable capacity of more than one Terabyte (TB) in a single rack.
The subsystem offers up to 4GB of cache memory and can be operated in RAID 0, 1, 5, and 0+1, as well as non-RAID modes. The 5800 comes with up to 4 Fibre Channel connections to the host processor and can be configured with from 1-8 Ultra SCSI or Ultra2 SCSI connections for higher connectivity.
***National Semiconductor Announces complete Scanner-on-a-Chip (November 30)
National Semiconductor has introduced a system-on-a-chip solution for color image and document scanners. The LM9830 incorporates the functions of a color scanner, including analog front end, sensor clock generation, microstepping motor control, data buffering and parallel port interface, into a single integrated circuit.
Using a 6MHz, 12-bit ADC with pipelined architecture, National's LM9830 operates at a 6 million pixels/second conversion rate and scans images in full 36-bit color. The LM9830 incorporates digital offset and shading correction, as well as all the analog processing functions that National built into earlier imaging products, such as gain offset and correlated double sampling.
In addition, digital pixel processing and individual RGB gamma tables enable the new part to provide a variety of high-quality resolutions from 50 to 600 dpi horizontal. Vertical resolutions are also 50-600 dpi in one dpi increments.
The LM9830 has fine control over system clock rates, which allows matching the scanner clock rate to the parallel port interface speed. This improvement results in scan speeds that are as much as 4X faster than current parallel scanners. By zooming in on a subset of CCD pixels, the device can transmit an arbitrary range of pixels to speed up the scanning of smaller items such as business cards. Pixel depths of 1, 2, or 4 bits are packed into bytes for faster scans of line art and low pixel depth images.
The microstepper motor controller determines the effective vertical resolution and moves the sensor over the image at a constant speed. A PWM current-control option for the stepper motor delivers the high torque and smooth movement needed for faster scans and superior images. This feature also allows use of a less expensive motor with a lower current rating.
The LM9830 is powered by a single 5V source and typically dissipates just 350mW. It includes a low-power standby mode for powerdown capability. National also provides complete TWAIN driver software and support.
Available now in a 100-lead TQFP (thin quad flat pack), the LM9830VJD is priced at $10 in 1000-unit quantities.
http://www.national.com/pf/LM/LM9830.html
http://www.national.com
***National Semiconductor Introduces DC'97 Audio Accelerator (November 30)
National Semiconductor announced the LM4560, an advanced DC '97 PCI audio accelerator. Designed for cost-sensitive multimedia PC and audio add-in card applications, the LM4560 provides system level performance enhancement over an equivalent ISA audio controller. The single-chip audio accelerator integrates a 64-voice wave table engine with per voice effect processing capability. In addition, the accelerator also supports 32 simultaneous digital audio channels, which permits greater realism in video games by simultaneously playing many different WAV file sound effects, plus Doppler effects.
The LM4560 offers Audio Modem CODEC (AMC) support and is compatible with the DLS Level 1 (downloadable samples) specification. This support provides full duplex speakerphone and fax-modem capability by using the CODEC and host-based software. Also, DLS1 will provide the flexibility of utilizing multiple sample sets. This gives the user flexibility to choose which samples set they wish to play. Depending on the file the user is playing, each sample set can provide different instrument audio quality.
Additional features of the LM4560 accelerator include:
· PCI Bus Power Management Interface (PPMI 1)
· 3.3V operation
· Multiple CODEC support for docking stations and more than two speaker systems
· Legacy compatibility (SoundBlaster and DMA), wavetable synthesis, DirectMusic, DirectSound 2D/3D
· MIDI port support (MPU 401)
· Digital/Analog game port interface
· I2S input/output support
· SP/DIF output supportHoused in a 100-pin TQFP (thin quad flatpack), the LM4560 is priced at $8.00 in quantities of 1,000.
http://www.national.com/pf/LM/LM4560.html
http://www.national.com
***Sony Announces 16-Mbit SRAM
(November 30)
Sony Electronics announced CXK77V80160TM-9 a 16-Mbit SRAM. The highest density SRAM currently marketed, Sony's latest high-speed synchronous SRAM is organized as 2,097,152 words by 8-bits.
It will enable reduced component count in designs supercomputer applications and networking applications, such as routers and switches where a large bandwidth, high-throughput buffer is demanded.
With speeds of up to 9ns (111Mhz), CXK77V80160TM-9 provides fast cycle times. Five nanosecond clock-to-data valid is also featured for high-speed requirements. This high performance is attained without adding unusual power requirements. CXK77V80160TM-9 offers low power consumption and relies on a standard 3.3V supply. It is LVTTL and LVCMOS compatible and provides byte select capabilities, asynchronous /OE and separate I/O.
Sony's CXK77V80160TM-9 is offered as a 78-pin TSOP II. Samples will be available third quarter and production quantities will begin shipping fourth quarter, 1998. In production volumes, pricing will range between $200 and $250 (US).
***Pilot Island Releases "Goodies" for the 3Com PalmPilot (November 16)
Pilot Island Publishing Inc., developer of Pilot Goodies, a collection of add-ons for 3Com's PalmPilot, have released the Typhoon interface, an easy-to-use utility for uninstalling PalmPilot OS-compatible programs. The user uses a HotSync button to read the programs installed on the PalmPilot, then chooses the specific ones that need to be removed. More Pilot Goodies is being sold for $19.95.
The company's previously released Goodies package, $29.95, included BreEZe, a user interface making it easier to select, organize, and upload PalmPilot programs from the Internet with a drag and drop format. Once added, the programs are automatically decompressed and added to the selected category location.
The company plans to release another component, The PalmParrot, a snap-on sound card with voice recognition, recording and playback, digital sound, and DTMF auto dialing in early 1999. The system runs on 2 AAA batteries, has a built in microphone, and includes a stereo headphone jack to enable private listening. The system will be sold for a retail price of $129.00.
***Semico Research Predicts Foundry Wafer Shortages (November 30)
In this sluggish semiconductor market its hard to envision a return to double-digit growth rates, however, a report released by Semico Research Corp. reveals that industry demand for wafers increases at a compound rate of 13 percent over the next five years.
Foundry demand will grow at an even faster rate of 21 percent over the same period. It could be much higher depending on the route IDMs (Independent Device Manufacturers) take with in-house versus foundry production.
Currently almost 5 percent of IDM's total wafer needs are produced at foundries. If IDMs increase that percent to 10 percent by 2002, the foundry market could grow 40 percent. This could produce foundry wafers shortages as early as 2000. IDMs and foundries may find a need to ramp up those delayed projects in record time during 2000. Consolidation and buyouts of memory companies as well as others will tend to reduce the amount of excess capacity. It is true that just because a company merges, the production capacity does not disappear. However, when a company such as Micron and Texas Instruments or Hyundai and LG Semicon combines assets, facility management changes. The impact of fab delays, closures, and sales will be evident within the next year or even sooner.
Dedicated foundries, with or without joint venture partners are now a major source of new capacity. But that honor comes at a cost. Leading edge technology, such as 0.18 micron processes and 300mm wafers is expensive. The cost will have to be weighed against the demand for new technology versus the ability of existing capacity to fill those needs.
Other findings include a potential shift in the ASIC market. As foundries strengthen its design services and intellectual property libraries there is a growing potential for system houses to bypass the merchant semiconductor vendor and go straight to a foundry to fulfill semiconductor needs.
***Quickturn announces CoBALT Plus
(November 30)
Quickturn Design Systems introduced CoBALT Plus (Concurrent Broadcast Array Logic Technology), the third release of its custom-processor-based emulation system product line, featuring improvements in emulation capacity and co-simulation speed over previous versions.
CoBALT Plus features the industry's highest capacity available in a single chassis. The initial CoBALT offering, now known as the CE series (CE1000 to CE8000) offers eight configurations ranging from one million to eight million gates maximum capacity, in million-gate increments.
The new CL series (CL10000 to CL20000) offers capacities from 10 million to 20 million at 2.5 million gate increments. Both series share software, chassis and hardware enhancements to dramatically improve compilation and co-simulation speed as well as ease of use. Improvements in the compilation process enable CoBALT Plus to compile designs at twice the speed of the previous version - on average of two million gates per hour-and up to 15 times faster for very large designs. For example, beta test results on five million and six million gate designs turned in compile times of 1.7 and 2.5 hours, respectively.
Speed and flexibility are also benefits of the enhanced multi-user mode in CoBALT Plus. Designers can debug simultaneously different designs or individual modules of the same design on a single CoBALT Plus system. Quickturn has added support for up to eight direct attached stimulus (DAS) cards, allowing the user to run eight concurrent testbench co-simulation sessions on eight separate workstations.
Users can also mix in-circuit emulation and co-simulation sessions concurrently. This feature produces very fast, mixed-level testbench co-simulation throughput, each session accelerated up to 100 times over software simulation.
The enhanced multi-user mode also takes advantage of implementation of PCI bus in latest Sun Solaris workstations allowing local testbench co-simulation with Leapfrog, Verilog XL, NC Verilog and Vera, as well as ModelSim and Quickturn's SpeedSim. CoBALT Plus also can be linked directly to high performance C/C++ based testbenches.
With the increase in capacity, CoBALT Plus also comes at a lower cost per gate. For example, the CE2000, with a two million gate configuration, provides emulation at about 79 cents per gate, while the CL20000 at 20 million gates is available for a cost of approximately 55 cents per gate.
***SSH Communications Security Ltd. Releases Complete Digital Certification Package (December 1)
SSH Communications Security Ltd. will announce their product, SSH X.509 Certificate Tools, as a complete library for IPSEC applications that require strong authentication of parties through digital certification. The product is designed to be an out of the box certificate processing library and tool.
The X.509 is tailor made for IPSEC applications including third party IPSEC implementations in VPNs, routers, and firewalls. It can be used for retrieving certificates from a public Certification Authority (CA) through Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), processing Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs), and generating certificate requests. X.509 is a complete solution for certificates including fast mathematics, cryptography library, multilevel hierarchies, and support for smart cards.
SSH X.509 has been tested for interoperability against products of vendors such as VeriSign, Microsoft, XCert, Entrust, AU Systems (ID2 Technologies), and Baltimore Technologies.
***Philips Working On Advanced 3D Rotational Angiography Workstation (November 29)
Philips Medical Systems announced it is developing a Rotational Angiography (3D-RA) workstation, which will provide accurate reconstructed 3D images of a person's vascular morphology.
Based on the Philips INTEGRIS V Rotational Angiography technique, Philips' INTEGRIS 3D-RA workstation enables extremely small vascular details to be visualized in three dimensions.
The complexity of neuro-interventional procedures lies in the fact that every person's pathology is unique. Visualization in three dimensions is therefore vital to aid decision-making by the clinician. In the past, it was not possible to treat some patients because lack of detailed imaging information meant the interventional treatments posed too great a risk to the patient. In other cases limited imaging information may not have revealed that an alternative treatment, such as a surgical procedure, would have been more appropriate. When the Philips INTEGRIS 3D-RA workstation becomes available, physicians will be able to view 3D neuro-vascular images in real-time.
Philips' INTEGRIS 3D-RA workstation is planned to be the fastest system to reconstruct 3D images in the industry, the first reconstruction taking approximately six minutes (including the image transfer from the acquisition system to the 3D-RA workstation). Additional reconstructions take from 20 seconds to 10 minutes depending on the number of voxels in the volume. The accuracy of reconstruction will allow physicians to analyze complex morphological lesions, such as the shape of an aneurysm, its relation to the parent vessel and the location of small branching arteries. This detailed pre-intervention analysis will provide critical information for treatment, with the potential of improving the outcome of the procedure.
The use of a Philips INTEGRIS 3D-RA workstation will also aid in reducing the dose levels and contrast load needed during an intervention, as the physician will be provided with a 3D view of the patient's vasculature with one single imaging run and one contrast injection. The imaging data is sent directly to the 3D-RA workstation, which reconstructs a complete 3D view of the anatomy in real-time. The physician can analyze the 3D image directly on the workstation to decide on the best treatment strategy. If an endovascular procedure is deemed most appropriate, the 3D-RA images can help in determining on the best projection angle for the treatment, such as positioning of catheters, coils, balloons or stents. Normally, this search for the best angle would be made with fluoroscopic procedures involving more X-ray dose and higher volumes of contrast media. In addition, the 3D-RA workstation will enable clinicians to carry out a reconstructed zoom of an image, to several sizes and at any location to obtain smaller, detailed structures.
***ThrustMaster Launches the Frag Master
(November 30)
ThrustMaster launched its controller for first person shooter games-the Frag Master. The Frag Master is now shipping at an estimated street price of US $69.95.
The Frag Master is specifically designed to bypass the traditional computer keyboard to work as the controller of choice with popular first person shooter games such as Quake and Unreal. The Frag Master is the first controller that gives users two-handed control to improve their game accuracy and speed-a function that is impossible to find in a one-handed game controller.
***WavePhore Partners with Wave Systems to Enable Broadcast Pay-Per-Use (November 30)
WavePhore, Inc. has partnered with Wave Systems Corporation to utilize Wave's EMBASSY E-commerce content metering and payment system. The agreement will enable the broadcast of pay-per-view, subscription, and rental content such as games, information services, and video services to WaveTop subscribers.
WaveTop's electronic commerce and advertising supported service also provides multimedia programming including news, investment advice and information, children's programming, weather, consumer reports, and free software downloads. These programs are supplied by Web content providers and distributed nationally via the unused portion of television signals from 264 PBS member stations around the country.
Consumers can make use of the secure payment services by utilizing TV tuner cards incorporating the Wave Systems EMBASSY E-commerce system, such as the WinTV card from Hauppauge Digital. The EMBASSY system offers secure purchasing pay-per-use or rent-to-own entertainment and education software titles directly through a PC.
WaveTop's PC data broadcast service works by embedding data streams into the unseen portion of existing television signals using the Vertical Blanking Interval. Using a browser interface and a broadcast ready PC, a standard PC with a built-in TV tuner or equipped with an add-on TV tuner card, uses can interact with downloaded information, entertainment and software.
http://www.wavephore.com
http://www.wavetop.net
http://www.hauppauge.com
***idealab! Announces eWallet, Making Purchases on the Web One Click Easier (November 25)
idealab! announced eWallet, a PC program that allows consumers to make safe, secure purchases on the Web without filling out numerous forms for every purchase. eWallet is stored securely on a user's PC, is compatible with existing credit and debit cards, and is designed to work at every e-commerce site on the Web.
After the program has been downloaded, consumers input their credit card and shipping information and encrypt it on their PC with a personal identification number (PIN). When they encounter a checkout screen on an e-commerce site they can just click on their wallet, enter the PIN, and drag the credit card of choice over to the form. All of the credit card and shipping information is entered automatically and instantly.
eWallet's other features include a task bar located at the bottom of the screen that can be used to query certain search engines and save links to frequented e-commerce sites.
eWallet requires Win 95/98 and works with Netscape Navigator/Communicator 4.0 or higher and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher.
eWallet can be downloaded for free at
***Certicom Announces SSL Plus for the Palm Computing Platform (December 1)
Certicom Corp. has announced SSL Plus, a commerce SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol toolkit for the Palm Computing platform. This enables developers to build a secure Internet channel to enterprise applications from Palm Computing Platform-based handheld computers.
The program uses Certicom's elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) technology. The primary benefits of SSL Plus for wireless communications and Internet/Intranet access applications include:
· Flexible application development - applications secured by the SSL Plus can be deployed at an end user customer site without concern for the security of the underlying network links.
· Seamless Application Integration - security is built into the application with SSL Plus making it easier to use and resulting in lower training costs
· Fast Time-to-Market - The toolkit does not require application developers to have cryptographic expertise. SSL Plus includes an easy to use API, documentation, and sample code, allowing customers to rapidly deploy their source products
· Network Independence - SSL Plus offers security independent of the underlying networking technology, making the deployment of secure enterprise applications faster, less complex, and less costly.
· Open Industry Standard - Certicom has added ECC support through the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol.
· Client/Server Authentication - SSL provides full support for the use of certificates for client and server-side authentication
***Household PC Penetration Jumps to Nearly 50% (November 30)
Nearly 50 million US households now have a PC, according to a recently released study from Ziff Davis. The results are from ZD Market Intelligence's Technology User Profile 1998 Midyear Study. The study showed that US household PC penetration soared to 48.2% in August, a jump of nearly 3.5 percentage points above the January level.
Income continues to play an important role in PC penetration. The higher the household income, the more likely the household is to have a PC. Nearly three-quarters of households with annual incomes above $75,000 have a PC, while only 22% of households with income less than $20,000 own a PC. However, lower income households are gaining ground. Households with incomes below $30,000 represented less than one-quarter of all PC households, but more than one-third of all first-time PC buyers in 1H98.
Base: YE97 1H98 Incr.
Under $10K 14.0% 3.6%
$10-20K 22.5% 2.6%
$20-30K 34.1% 1.9%
$30-40K 44.0% 6.0%
$40-50K 54.9% 1.7%
$50-60K 62.0% 2.8%
$60-75K 65.9% 1.8%
$75-100K 66.7% 2.9%
$100-125K 72.2% 2.5%
$125K+ 73.9% 7.0%
Overall 44.75% 3.46%
The presence of children in the household and the education level of the head of household also contribute to PC penetration. PCs are found in only 40% of households without children, but are found in 62% of households with children. In households where the highest level of education attained is a high school diploma, PC penetration is only 31%. This is about half the level of penetration seen in households where the head of household has at least a college degree (63%).
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