3Com Corp. to License Palm Inc. OS Technologies

Electronic News, June 5, 2000 by Jerry Ascierto

Jumping into the burgeoning Internet appliance market, 3Com Corp. and Palm Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., recently announced a licensing agreement to use Palm OS technologies in 3Com's upcoming Internet appliance line. 3Com plans to integrate features of the Palm OS software, including the HotSync data synchronization technology, into 3Com's first Internet appliance which will debut later this year. Both companies see this licensing agreement as the first step toward closer collaboration.

ARCing Pixels

ARC Cores, London, and PixelFusion Ltd., Bristol, England, have announced a jointly developed media processor based on ARC's user-configurable 32-bit processor that runs applications such as high-performance graphics and video networking. The programmable device is the first product from 3D graphics intellectual property firm PixelFusion. The Uzion 150 is a 0.25-micron, single-chip, massively parallel single-instruction multiple-data processor with 24Mbit of embedded DRAM. According to the firms, it delivers more than 1.5 trillion operations, or 3 billion floating-point operations per second, along with 600Gbyte/sec. of on-chip memory bandwidth. The firm said that ARC's 32-bit microprocessor is essential to the operation of the chip, as it is used both for managing the hardware elements and as the central controller for the software. PixelFusion took full advantage of the configurability of the ARC core, removing the DSP MAC and using the fast multiplier and barrel shifter instead. PixelFusion's technology, known as Fuzion, allows deployment of a maximum number of transistors for processing data in parallel, giving higher levels of performance to specific computing tasks including graphics, video and networking, the firm said. It is a programmable architecture with most of its functionality defined by microcode.

Patented Photobit

Photobit Corp., Pasadena, Calif., was recently issued a third broad patent for sensor technology. U.S. Patent No. 5,990,506, titled "Active-Pixel Sensors with Substantially Planarized Color Filtering Elements," covers the basic light-filtering process by which CMOS image sensors capture color. This new patent joins Photobit's two other U.S. patentsaNo. 5,471,515 for "active-pixel" circuitry, a CMOS imaging patent for placing an amplifier in each pixel, and No. 5,841,126 for "camera system-on-a-chip" architecture that addresses the combining of a pixel array and control circuitry on one piece of silicon. The company's intellectual property portfolio now totals 13 patents, with more than 70 additional patents pending. Sabrina Kemeny, president and chief executive officer of Photobit, along with Eric Fossum, Photobit chairman and chief scientist, is listed as co-inventor on the new patent, which was issued November 23, 1999 and is licensed to Photobit by the California Institute of Technology. Announcement of the color-filter patent follows recent news of an ingestible "camera-in-a-pill," to be marketed by Israel's Given Imaging Ltd. That device obtains color video of the gastrointestinal tract as it passes through the body. Fossum led the team that invented CMOS active-pixel sensor technology at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the early 1990s, technology that is considered a breakthrough in image sensors.

Toshiba MP3 Gets Carded

One of the stumbling blocks on the road to MP3aand digital, downloadable music in generalahas been the issue of copyright protection. Toshiba Corp. last week made a move to assuage the recording industry's fears. The company said it has begun shipping its new mobile audio player, dubbed the MEA110AS, equipped with Texas Instruments Inc.'s programmable DSP. Addressing the copyright issues of digital music, Toshiba said the mobile audio player is the first to offer a Secure Digital (SD) memory card slot supporting storage of copyright-protected content. The mobile audio player is able to download music to 64Mbytes of built-in flash memory or to 32Mbytes or 64Mbytes SD memory cards via the player's USB port. The built-in flash memory and the SD memory cards support Content Protection for Recordable Media, an advanced copyright-protection technology, Toshiba said. TI's TMS320C5000 series DSP supports AAC and MP3 formats, both of which are used in Toshiba's mobile audio player. Citing Forrester Research, Toshiba said the installed base of portable players is expected to reach three million by the end of 2000, seven million by 2001 and 32 million by 2003. TI's DSPs are designed into more than 30 next-generation portable audio players.