The WAVE Report on Digital Media
3D --- Media Creation --- Shared Space
---Published by 4th Wave, Inc.---
Issue #0206------------------2/22/02

 

The WAVE Report is Searchable on

http://www.3dlinks.com
http://www.wave-report.com/search/search.htm

--------------------------------------

0206.1 Hot Topics

0206.2 Story of the Issue

0206.3 3D

0206.4 Wireless

0206.5 Displays

--------------------------------------

0206.1 Hot Topics

***Philips Semiconductors Produces World's First Dual-Mode
2.5G/3G RF Reference Design PCB
(February 18)

Philips Semiconductors, a division of Royal Philips Electronics,
today launches the world's first dual-mode RF reference design
for GSM/UMTS handsets, providing manufacturers with a complete RF
system for the test and evaluation of 2.5 and 3G mobile phones.

The new 48 x 26mm(2) single side Printed Circuit Board (PCB),
comparable in size to the current radios of single mode GSM
phones, will enable handset manufacturers to produce dual-mode,
GSM dual-band/WCDMA radio PCBs. The reference design is the first
on the market to include all of the RF components needed to build
a GSM/UMTS cellular handset suitable for WCDMA FDD modulation.
The integrated RF architecture also reduces the number of
external components optimizing the size and cost of the PCB.

The circuit board is designed around a complete 3G RF chipset
using the 0.25um QUBiC4 silicon process technology, and includes
the 3G Zero IF transmit and receive components the UAA3580 and
UAA3581, and Silicon Power Amplifier (PA) UAA3592.

The GSM part of the RF reference design is built around the 2.5G
Near Zero IF transceiver IC the UAA3536, providing clock
frequency to the 2.5 and 3G RF functionality, and 8x10 mm GaAs PA
module CGY2017 with its 4x4mm power controller IC UBA1711.

Samples of the complete RF reference design with radio chains for
both GSM and UMTS are now available for evaluation purposes, with
3G RF Chipset volume production scheduled for Q4 2002.

http://www.semiconductors.philips.com

***Quantum3D Brings new NVIDIA Quadro4 Graphics Technology to
Embedded Visual Computing Market
(February 19)

Quantum3D, Inc. today introduced two new embedded graphics
subsystems based on NVIDIA Corporation's just-announced Quadro4
graphics technology. These new products are designed to meet the
requirements of the rapidly growing embedded visual computing
market, which includes both military and commercial vehicle
"smart displays" and Embedded Training (ET) applications. The new
Quantum3D products include Sentiris PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC), the
first NVIDIA Quadro-based PMC, and Ventana PCI, the first single-
board, multi-channel, 2D/ 3D PCI graphics subsystem based on dual
NVIDIA Quadro Graphics Processing Units (GPUs).

Sentiris PMC and Ventana PCI reflect the latest efforts by
Quantum3D and NVIDIA under the companies' FARSIGHT nV™
initiative-the agreement between Quantum3D and NVIDIA which
enables Quantum3D to bring NVIDIA GPU technologies to the
embedded visual computing market. FARSIGHT nV seeks to provide
commercial and military aircraft, vehicles, vessels and
transportable systems with NVIDIA Quadro-based graphics engines
that provide realtime graphical, sensor, symbolic and imagery-
based information for situational awareness and operational
mission effectiveness.

http://www.quantum3d.com

***America Online and Motorola to Bring the AOL Instant Messenger
Service to Next Generation Motorola Wireless Messaging Devices
(February 18)

America Online, Inc., the interactive services company, and
Motorola, Inc., a provider of integrated communications and
embedded electronic solutions, announced today that the companies
are working together to integrate a built-in version of the AOL
Instant Messenger service (AIM) into a wide range of Motorola
wireless handsets. By including the AIM service as an embedded
feature on its wireless devices, Motorola and AOL hope to make it
easier for mobile operators to offer consumers a mobile instant
messaging solution without requiring consumers to install or set
up any software on their wireless device.

The AOL Instant Messenger service is used by millions of Internet
users every day to communicate by text in real time. The AIM
Buddy List feature allows users to immediately see when family,
friends and other contacts are online and available to exchange
instant messages.

The embedded version of the AIM service for mobile devices was
launched last fall and is currently a finalist for the GSM
Association's Best Consumer Application or Service award.

Motorola and AOL will be conducting demonstrations of the built-
in AIM service on Motorola wireless devices in AOL Time Warner's
stand at this week's 3GSM World Congress and exhibition in
Cannes, France.

http://www.motorola.com
http://www.aol.com


0206.2 Story of the Issue

***Computer History Museum
By John Latta

Taking form in a non-descript warehouse on Moffett Field
(Mountain View), CA is the makings of one of the outstanding
museums in the US. It already contains many precious jewels over
the last 75 years of computing. Bulging at the seams with
hundreds of tons of artifacts and more coming this is a treasure
chest, in the area of computing, of the scale of the
Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Yet, it is barely a
diamond in the rough. The only current display, which is called
"visible storage," provides just enough space to walk between
machines that have a few signs with the names of the items. This
covers only 20,000 square feet. Yet, for those, such as myself,
who have used computers for 30+ years, it afforded an incredible
vista of the progress of technology.

The museum artifacts go back to early efforts by Gordon Bell when
he was at Carnegie Mellon University in the late 1960s.
Progressively he began to collect artifacts at home as part of
his investigation into the history of computing. When Gordon
returned to Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) the company acquired
space formerly held by RCA in the Boston area. This was the
foundation for the Digital Computer Museum that opened in
September 1979. Then, in November 1984, the museum moved and
opened to the public in Museum Wharf where it shared space with
the Children's Museum and had the top two floors (60,000 square
feet). In parallel, in 1996, there was formed the Computer Museum
History Center in California. When the Computer Museum in Boston
shifted location again to the Museum of Science, with an emphasis
on exhibits, the California museum focused on the archival
collections which then a part of the Computer Museum in Boston.
Approximately 1/2 of the artifacts went to California while the
rest stayed in Boston. These artifacts arrived at Moffett Field
on February 2000. Since then the collection has continued to
expand. At the present time the Museum is in the process of
cataloging all of its possessions.

This spring the museum will launch its fund raising campaign to
secure the $100m it needs for both a permanent exhibition center
due to open in 2005 and initial operating expenses. Already they
have secured $50m. Those that have participated in the industry
have been enthusiastic supporters. This museum is a part of the
personal professional legacy of many to have contributed to one
of the great technical advancements in the 20th century.

Currently the "visible storage" is located in building 126 on
Moffett Field and will move to a "Beta" building in late summer.
This will include: 41,000 square feet of usage space of which
22,500 will be for storage and 9,000 sq feet for exhibits and
events.

All tours are on an advance request basis and can be arranged
from the
Web site.

The WAVE Report visited the Computer History Museum to see and
learn about the developments in this emerging center which seeks
"to preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and stories
of the information age." At the same time we sought to record for
the readers of the WAVE Report the richness of the collection. In
the next week we expect to put up on the WAVE Report web site
200+ images of the artifacts and storage. We will send the link
in the next WAVE Report.

I walked into building 126 at 5pm and was greeted by John Toole,
Executive Director & CEO, Dr. Michael Williams, Head Curator and
Karen Mathews, Executive VP. Dr. Williams gave me an excellent 1-
hour tour of virtually all the artifacts. It began slowly with
ENIAC because I asked too many questions. They were very generous
with their time while I took pictures to 9 pm. We are pleased to
present these to the WAVE Report readers.

http://www.computerhistory.org


0206.3 3D

***BOXX Taps New NVIDIA Quadro4 XGL Architecture to Offer
Groundbreaking 3DBOXX Workstations
(February 19)

BOXX Technologies, a developer and manufacturer of systems for
the digital content creation and film industries, today announced
support for NVIDIA's new Quadro(tm)4 XGL architecture with
nView(tm) multidisplay technology in its 3DBOXX series of
graphics workstations running Windows 2000 and Linux.

Available in dual processor configurations running Microsoft
Windows 2000 or Linux, the 3DBOXX series of workstations with
Quadro4 technology is certified and optimized for leading 3D and
animation software programs such as Maya, 3D Studio MAX,
Softimage 3D, and LightWave 3D and leading CAD programs such as
AutoCAD, CATIA, Microstation, Pro/Engineer, Solid Edge,
SolidWorks and others.

3DBOXX featuring Quadro4 XGL Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)
support advanced shader operations and are designed to accelerate
OpenGL® and DirectX® professional applications by implementing
workstation functionality, such as hardware overlay planes,
hardware-accelerated antialiased points and lines, advanced
memory management, and other features critical to improving
performance in professional applications. NVIDIA's Quadro4
products also utilize the NVIDIA Unified Driver Architecure(tm)
(UDA), a set of backward and forward, top to bottom compatible
graphics drivers intended to optimize application performance,
stability and reliability.

3DBOXX will be available with the Quadro4 900 XGL, 700 and 750
XGL, and 500 and 550 XGL GPUs. 3DBOXX with Quadro4 XGL
technology is expected to ship late February 2002, with pricing
starting at $1,780 (US).

http://www.boxxtech.com
http://www.nvidia.com

***Blender 3D Media Platform brings 3D applications to Mobile
Devices
(February 2002)

Not a Number (NaN) has presented a technology and production
platform for wireless communication and entertainment media, the
Blender 3D Media Platform, that enables consumers to view and
play 3D media applications, including MMS and games, on GPRS and
UMTS mobile devices. The system has already been contracted to
leading European UMTS license holders.

The Blender 3D Media Platform provides mobile media services with
3D graphics and 3D movies, enables multi-media messaging with
user-customizable 3D content, and enables playback of Blender-
created games and interactive presentations thanks to the Blender
Java Client.

Blender 3D Media Platform system is aimed to be compatible with
any color-enabled GPRS or UMTS device, with a minimal set of
requirements for processing on the client side. The platform
streams images in JPEG, PNG, or MPEG4 format to a client, which
then can function as a remote control and remote display for the
application.

The platform has been designed for access by 3rd party
applications on the server side as well, for example for MMS
(Multi Media Messaging), 3D e-cards and weather reports.

The Blender 3D's advantages include:

- Multi purpose architecture; rendering of 3D stills, movies or
full-blown 3D games.
- The 3D engines run on any Unix server, independent of the
graphics- and OS.
- The small footprint of the engine allows multiple engines to
run on a single server.
- A single engine can serve up to 50 different users
concurrently.
- The Blender SSR Creation suite offers developers a platform for
producing advanced 3D content, including games.
- Mobile Emulation is included in the Blender SSR Creation suite,
for previews, testing or tweaking the game play.

http://www.blender3d.com/


0206.4 Wireless

***Bluetooth Wireless Technology Passes 500 Qualified Products
Milestone
(February 21)

Bluetooth Special Interest Group, Inc. announced it has been
qualifying, on average, over ten new Bluetooth wireless products
each week during the quarter ending 31 December 2001, bringing
the total number of qualified products to over 500. A number of
these products are now commercially available in Europe, Asia and
the United States. Nearly half of the 133 new products qualified
last quarter include mobile phone, computing and other consumer
electronics products. The remainder of the products qualified
during the quarter were the critical chips, software and
development tools from which equipment manufacturers can build
their own Bluetooth wireless products.

Also this week the Bluetooth SIG, Inc. publicly announced the
formation of its Interoperability Task Force. This group, which
began meeting late last year, is exploring ways to further
improve the interoperability and usability of products equipped
with Bluetooth wireless technology.

In late January, nearly 350 engineers tested over 150 different
products at the quarterly Bluetooth SIG Unplugfest in Hong Kong.
The Bluetooth SIG, Inc. sponsors Unplugfests each quarter as a
forum for developers to test interoperability and compatibility
with the Bluetooth Specification.

To date, there are over 500 qualified products. Work continues
among the Bluetooth Promoter and Associate member companies to
add additional applications to the Bluetooth wireless
specification. In-depth updates to the Bluetooth SIG membership
and the development community regarding these efforts are planned
at the upcoming annual Bluetooth Congress to be held in
Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 11-14 June, 2002.

http://www.bluetooth.com


0206.5 Displays

***eMagin Awarded Patent to Increase OLED Flat Panel Display Life
and Brightness
(February 21)

eMagin Corporation, a provider of organic light emitting diode
(OLED)-on-silicon display technology, today announced that it has
been awarded a new patent for technology that can significantly
increase lifetime and luminance in OLED displays. eMagin stated
that the invention described in U.S. Patent No. 6,337,492 could
enable production of higher brightness OLED flat panel displays
with longer life for a given level of brightness.

The invention, entitled "Serially-Connected Organic Light
Emitting Diode Stack Having Conductors Sandwiching Each Light
Emitting Layer," creates stacked organic light emitting devices
driven by a current flowing uniformly through each of the stacked
devices, or "sandwiches." Each device emits light so that the
sandwich generates more light with the same current flow than
would be generated by a single device.

eMagin stated that combining the new structure with eMagin's high
temperature, long life, full visible color spectrum white OLED
display technology has the potential to more than double lifetime
or luminance. The OLED sandwich is potentially most useful in
manufacturing OLED displays that require operation at high
luminance levels, such as aircraft helmet-mounted displays and
sunlight-readable displays, or in applications with frequent
long-term fixed image patterns, such as instrument displays. This
invention is adaptable to miniature optically viewed
microdisplays as well as larger direct-view displays.

In addition to key patents licensed from Eastman Kodak, eMagin
now holds 64 patents in its portfolio with more than 70
additional U.S. patents pending. According to DisplaySearch, a
flat-panel display market research firm, the OLED display market
is expected to grow to $2.5 billion worldwide by 2005.

http://www.emagin.com

--------------------------------------

Copyright 2003 4th WAVE, Inc.

To subscribe to WAVE go to

http://www.wave-report.com

To unsubscribe also use the Wave Report Home page or send a
message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the text to

uchoudhry@wave-report.com

Previous issues of WAVE, as well as other info can be found at

http://www.wave-report.com
http://www.3dlinks.com

Comments on or questions about WAVE may be sent to:

wave@fourthwave.com

or any of the individuals below:

John N. Latta:--------------------------jnl@wave-report.com
M. Usman Choudhry:-------uchoudhry@wave-report.com

The WAVE Report may be redistributed in full for individual
readership and posted to newsgroups, Web, and FTP sites. This
publication may not be reprinted or redistributed for profit.
Short quotes are permitted but must be attributed to the WAVE
Report. 4th Wave retains the copyright to the WAVE Report.