18 Computer

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Three US companies will provide$250 million and work withthree national laboratories todevelop the technology forbuilding microprocessors that

are 100 times more powerful and mem-ory chips that store 1,000 times moredata than the current generation ofproducts.

Advanced Micro Devices, Intel, andMotorola will work with the USDepartment of Energy’s LawrenceBerkeley, Lawrence Livermore, andSandia National Laboratories on a three-year project to develop extreme ultravi-olet (EUV) lithography technology. Thiswill be the biggest partnership everbetween the national laboratories andprivate industry.

Chip makers hope EUV lithographywill let them print designs for processorswith 0.10-micron features. These designswould subsequently be etched into thewafers. Today’s deep ultraviolet lithog-raphy produces designs that yield 0.25-micron features and could eventuallyproduce 0.13-micron features, accordingto industry observers.

Chip makers want even smaller fea-tures so they can pack more transistorsonto chips. Intel expressed hope that

EUV lithography will permit 1 billiontransistors on chips by 2011. Currently,Intel’s most powerful chip has 7.5 mil-lion transistors.

The key problem researchers mustsolve is how to manufacture mirrors thatcan reflect EUV images of circuits ontowafers. This is necessary because EUVlight is invisible to lenses and cannot beprojected directly onto wafers, said Intelspokesman Howard High.

Four senior Democratic US senatorshave complained to Secretary of EnergyFederico Peña that the EUV project’s useof foreign suppliers, such as NikonCorp. of Japan, raises questions aboutlost US jobs and foreign access to

national laboratories. In addition, thesenators question whether the EUVagreement was adequately reviewed,said Dan Pearson, spokesperson forSenator George Brown Jr.

MICROSOFT ACCUSED OF VIOLATING COURT ORDER

The US Department of Justice hasaccused Microsoft of violating a 1995antitrust-related court order and hasasked the US District Court of theDistrict of Columbia to fine the companyup to $1 million per day unless it com-plies.

The Department of Justice contendsthat Microsoft violated the court orderby requiring PC manufacturers that wantto license Windows 95 to also license anddistribute the company’s Internet Ex-plorer browser. Under the court order,Microsoft cannot leverage its dominanceof the OS market by requiring PC mak-ers to license additional software as acondition for licensing Windows.

Microsoft, whose OS is found on anestimated 80 percent of PCs, has beenwaging a heated battle with Netscape fordominance in the browser market. Net-scape’s browser currently controls anestimated 60 percent of the market, butMicrosoft has steadily gained groundsince releasing Internet Explorer.

Microsoft said it has integratedInternet Explorer into its OS, so thebrowser is not a separate product andthus is not subject to the 1995 courtorder. Company spokesman MarkMurray said the court order permitsMicrosoft to “improve our products andintegrate new features.”

The Department of Justice contendsInternet Explorer is a separate productfrom Windows.

Netscape spokesperson Chris Holtensaid her company agrees with the federalgovernment’s action. Holten saidMicrosoft is competing unfairly withNetscape by using its control of the OSmarket to get people to use InternetExplorer.

Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson willhear arguments in the case early thismonth and decide which legal issues willbe pursued and when future hearings willtake place.

Firms to Invest$250 Million in

Next-GenerationProcessors

Editor: Lee Garber, Computer, 10662 LosVaqueros Circle, PO Box 3014, Los Alamitos,CA 90720-1314; l.garber@computer.org

Manufacturers hope EUVlithography will let them

make processors thatare very fast and chips

that can store hugeamounts of data.

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December 1997 19

Motorola has since announced that itdeveloped a similar technology. Thecompanies say their copper-based chipswill have more power, cost less, and gen-erate less heat.

IBM currently has copper chips inpilot production for use with the com-pany’s internal computer systems. Thechips will move to full commercial pro-duction early next year, initially asprocessors for high-end servers andworkstations, said Bill O’Leary,spokesperson for IBM’s microprocessordivision.

Copper is preferable to aluminumbecause its lower electrical resistancemakes it a better electrical conductor.However, chip makers had been unable toovercome various obstacles to using cop-per. For example, copper seeps into silicon.This contaminates the silicon, making itconductive where it shouldn’t be.

After 10 years of research, IBM said,the company achieved production-levelsolutions to such problems. For exam-ple, IBM developed a barrier layer to gobetween the copper and the silicon thatprevents seepage yet still properly con-ducts electricity.

Because copper is more conductivethan aluminum, copper circuits could bethinner. This would let manufacturersput more layers of transistors onto cop-per chips. This would increase comput-ing power by 40 percent initially,O’Leary said. IBM’s first copper-basedchips will run at 400 to 500 MHz andwill have 150 million to 200 million tran-sistors. Intel’s Pentium II chip has 7.5 mil-lion transistors.

Although copper and aluminum com-ponents cost about the same, the manu-facturing process with copper will be lessexpensive. This would make IBM’s newchips 20 to 30 percent less costly thancomparable aluminum-based processors.

Because of copper’s lower resistance to

EU REJECTS KEY ESCROWThe European Union (EU) has decided

not to heavily regulate encryption, reject-ing controversial policies currently underconsideration in the US.

The EU decided not to require users to place copies of encryption keys inescrow with designated third parties sogovernment agencies that obtain court-issued warrants can access the keys anddecode messages if they deem it necessary for public safety or nationalsecurity. In the US, the Clinton adminis-tration’s support for this key-escrow pol-icy has been vigorously opposed byprivacy advocates.

A key-escrow policy would make ittoo easy for governments to abuse elec-tronic privacy and would stifle interna-tional electronic commerce, said theEuropean Commission (EC), which pro-poses legislation to the EU Parliament.The EU will probably hold public hear-ings next spring on the policies, whichcould become law shortly thereafter.

France, an EU member that currentlybans any domestic use of cryptography,has proposed a law to the EC that wouldlet French businesses use cryptography ifthey adhere to a key-escrow policy. Thelaw would also require companies sell-ing products with embedded encryptionin France to reveal their software sourcecode.

EU member countries have some flexi-bility to develop domestic policies that dif-fer from European Union policies. In thecase of encryption, said EU spokespersonMaeve O’Beirne, the European Union pri-marily wants to make sure products inmember countries can circulate freely,based on market forces. Member statescan decide for themselves how to handlesecurity-related issues, she said.

However, O’Beirne expressed concernabout countries throughout the worldadopting vastly different encryption poli-cies. She said this could keep the inter-national marketplace from functioningproperly, which could hinder Internetcommerce.

IBM, MOTOROLA STRIKE COPPERIBM has developed a way to use cop-

per instead of aluminum in processor cir-cuitry, long a goal of chip makers.

electricity, IBM’s new chips will requireless voltage to operate. Batteries wouldthus last longer in laptops and otherdevices.

Motorola will begin pilot productionof copper chips next summer, and fullproduction will start in September, saidcompany spokesperson Chuck Granieri.

CAIDA PROMOTES NET COOPERATIONThe University of California’s

National Laboratory for AppliedNetwork Research has launched theCooperative Association for InternetData Analysis (CAIDA) to promote engi-neering and technical collaborationamong the ISPs, vendors, and usergroups that populate the Internet.

CAIDA will also provide a linkbetween commercial ISPs and theresearch sector. For example, coopera-tive tool development will be an impor-tant part of the organization’s work, saidTracie Monk, CAIDA’s director of exter-nal affairs. Currently, CAIDA is workingwith MCI Telecommunications todevelop a real-time Internet traffic-flowcharacterization monitor. They will makethe monitor’s code and specificationspublic when it is finished.

Promoting Internet growth and scalingis also a goal. For example, CAIDA wantsto promote the development of advancednetworking technologies, as well as vari-ous protocols for IP version 6.

Changes in the Internet’s infrastructurenecessitated formation of CAIDA, Monksaid. When the Internet evolved from abackbone sponsored by the US NationalScience Foundation (NSF) to a complexcommercial mesh of ISP networks, therewas no longer a centralized Internet struc-ture or cooperation among participants.

Meanwhile, ISPs needed a way towork together to get information aboutthe aggregate Internet, so they couldmanage their own pieces of the infra-structure in the interests of everyone, saidNSF spokesperson Don Mitchell.

Proponents say CAIDA will meet allof these needs.

The NSF will give CAIDA $3.1 mil-lion over three years. A number of tech-nology vendors, including Cisco Systemsand Sun Microsystems, have providedcash and equipment.

IBM and Motorola say their copper-based chips

will have more power, cost less, and generate

less heat.

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20 Computer

News Briefs

COMMISSION RECOMMENDS MORE US RESEARCH FUNDING

The President’s Commission on Crit-ical Infrastructure Protection (PCCIP) hasrecommended increased funding for com-puter-security research, as part of a reporton US vulnerability to cyber-terrorism.

According to the report, US govern-ment agencies, utilities, companies, andother organizations are vulnerable tosophisticated cyberattacks that couldhack into public and private computersystems, bring down power grids, orcause other serious problems.

The commission’s recommendationsincluded more and better computer-secu-rity education programs, better com-puter-security systems, and revised laws,said Carla Sims, the PCCIP’s director ofpublic affairs.

The plan also recommended doublingfederal computer-security research fund-ing to $500 million next year, and thenincreasing the funding by 20 percent eachyear to $1 billion in 2004. Grants wouldgo to private industry, government agen-cies, and university graduate fellowships.

The commission also called for morecooperation between the private sector,which owns most of the nation’s infor-mation infrastructure, and the govern-ment, which regulates much of it. Thegovernment must enable the private sec-tor to take protective measures, saidPCCIP chair Tom Marsh.

For example, the government couldprovide grants, educational programs,and confidential forums in which com-panies could share information aboutsecurity problems.

HIGH-SPEED TOKEN RINGA group of 12 vendors has formed an

alliance designed to speed up and revivetoken ring technology.

The High-Speed Token Ring Alliancehas submitted standards for 100-Mbpsand 1-Gbps token ring technology to theIEEE. (The alliance says these standardswill support key attributes of today’s 4-Mbps and 16-Mbps token ring tech-nology.) The alliance plans to demon-strate 100-Mbps switched token ringtechnology next May.

The alliance—which includes BayNetworks, Cisco Systems, IBM, and

3Com—has set an ambitious timetablefor developing standards, said RandallCampbell, project line manager withCisco’s Interworks Business Unit.

Analyst Kevin Tolly of the TollyGroup, a technology consulting firm,said the alliance will produce these stan-dards faster than proponents produceFast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet stan-dards. Nonetheless, Tolly said, alliancemembers now have to scramble becausethey waited a long time to recognize thattheir customers need more speed.

The alliance’s target customers are thelarge companies that already have exten-sive token ring networks. Tolly estimatesthese companies have 20 millioninstalled nodes. Their large token ringnetworks are only now experiencing thebandwidth crunch that has already dri-ven high-speed Ethernet development.

THE ELECTRIC INTERNETTwo companies have developed a

technology for delivering high-speedInternet access over standard electricpower lines.

Because so many power lines arealready installed, the technology couldmake the Internet easy to access formany people and could be less expen-sive to implement than technologiesthat use satellites or fiber. In addition,power companies could become ISPs.

Beginning next April, NorthernTelecom, a Canadian provider of net-work-related products and services, andUnited Utilities PLC, a British powercompany, will test the new technologyin 200 homes in Manchester, UK.

With the new technology, Internetdata would go from Internet switchingpoints through fiber circuits to electricsubstations. From there, data would berouted through power lines.

Data traveling on power lines currentlycan’t go through transformers, said JohnCastagna, spokesperson for the Edison

Electric Institute, an association of electricutilities. So the new technology wouldroute data around the neighborhood trans-former. This would create a LAN of homesthat receive electric power from the sametransformer. A small box attached to homeelectric meters would separate data signalsfrom electricity. A cable would then carrydata to users’ PC cards.

Northern Telecom spokespersonMichelle Murray said the new service’sprimary market would be Europe andAsia, where the higher ratio of customersto transformers would make start-up costsrelatively low. In addition, traditional ISPservice via telephone networks is expen-sive in Europe and Asia, which generallyhave per-call local phone rates, rather thanthe flat rates found in North America.

TEENAGER OFFERS A SOLUTION TO YEAR 2000 PROBLEM

A 14-year-old New Zealand boy haswritten a program that may solve theYear 2000 problem on some computers.Nicholas Johnson, who wants to becomea programmer, said his approach is notthe ultimate solution to the so-called mil-lennium bug but could be a step in theright direction.

Andrew Siddel, a computer consultantin Johnson’s hometown of Christchurch,has reviewed Johnson’s solution and saidit appears very promising.

Johnson’s program, written in CompileBasic, modifies the computer BIOS at start-up and resets the system clock so it willaccurately report dates past December 31,1999. Johnson hopes to market the pro-gram and thus has been reluctant to releasemore details.

On computers with software thatlooks to the OS to determine the correctdate and time, his approach would elim-inate the Year 2000 problem. The pro-gram won’t help software that includesits own date information with years listedby their last two digits.

Industry analysts say governmentagencies, companies, and other organi-zations throughout the world will spendbetween $300 billion and $600 billion tosolve Year 2000 problems. ❖

Reporting by David Clark, dwclark@earthlink.net

The program modifies theBIOS at start-up and resets

the system clock so it properly reports dates

past December 31, 1999.

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