ISSUE 97-2

2/15/97

ABOUT THIS NEWSWIRE

Bill Ferster’s NewsWire is published bi-weekly and summarizes 
the important events in the convergent worlds of multimedia, 
video, animation, chips, mass storage and computers.

There is no charge for this NewsWire and offered as a service 
of Return On Invention (ROI), a consulting group helping high-
technology companies fully realize the potential from their 
investment in innovation. As experts in computer graphics and 
digital video, we focus on products used to communicate, edit, 
or manipulate complex information. 

You are encouraged to pass it along to anyone who may find the 
information useful. To subscribe, please send me an email at: 
bferster@crosslink.net or visit our web site at
http://www.crosslink.net~bferster.

VIDEO ON DEMAND

The American Film Institute (AFI) opened a new website that is 
capable of sending movies from their vast archives in real 
time over a 28.8 modem. The clips are small and are 
reminiscent of early QuickTime movies.

The site uses technology from VDO, called VDOLive, and can be 
accessed at http://www.afionline.org/cinema.

CHIPS

---> FPGA Reconfigurable Computing Gets On Windows-NT

Giga-Operations (http://www.reconfig.com) has furthered the 
prospect that FPGA reconfigurable computing (RC) will become a 
reality with the release of their XLINK operating system.

The basic concept behind RC is to use Field Programmable Gate 
Arrays (FPGAs) as general purpose processors. FPGAs are arrays 
of logic that operate at the speed of dedicated silicon, but 
can be instantly re-configured to perform some new task. This 
can yield a 10-100 time speed improvement for certain time 
intensive and recursive operations.

The problem has been programming the FPGAs. They are currently 
programmed more like the circuits they are, and less like 
higher-level application algorithms. Giga-Operations has 
created a ‘C’-like compiler, which makes it easier to put 
complex algorithms onto the chips.

---> Sony Intro.’s FireWire Chip

Sony has just announced a high level chip solution that will 
make connecting hardware to the emerging 1394, so called 
“FireWire," multimedia bus much easier.

The CXD1947Q and CXD1944R chips provide a simple and 
inexpensive way for PCI board makers to add the ability to 
connect via this emerging video transport medium. (800-288-
SONY)

WORKSTATIONS

---> SGI Intro’s New Product Line

Silicon Graphics (http://www.sgi.com) raised the bar with its 
newly announced OCTANE line of high performance graphics 
workstations. They are priced at $30,000-$60,000.

These computers work in a fundamentally different manner than 
other computers because of a new bus architecture that 
eliminates the bottlenecks involved with moving data from one 
part of the system to another.

Conventional systems pass all data via a common bus with 
finite bandwidth, which can cause a bottleneck when working 
with graphics and video. OCTANE solves this problem by 
implementing a crossbar, allowing up to 7 direct point-to-
point connections between various subsystems, such as graphics 
memory, image processing, 3D rendering and compression. Each 
independent connection can run at a blazing 1.6GB per second.

VIDEO

---> NEC Adds DVD Player in PC

Signaling an emerging trend putting DVD onto the desktop 
sooner than expected, NEC will begin shipping a new 
MMX/Pentium computer with an integrated DVD drive.

---> Sarnoff Demonstrates MPEG Stream Splicing

Researchers at the David Sarnoff Research Lab have 
demonstrated the ability to splice together MPEG compressed 
bitstreams in real-time.

The ability to edit MPEG streams without degrading the signal 
by decompressing them is important in the emerging ATV and 
HDTV initiatives.

APPLICATIONS

---> Xaos Tools Shows Apple New Graphics Technology

Xaos Tools (http://www.xaostools.com), a leading maker of SGI 
special effects software, gave Apple Computer a peek at some 
new, patented imaging technology.

They showed a new object-oriented graphics development 
environment, and more interesting, an array of brushes that 
make possible image processing using textural mutations of 
genetic algorithms and neural network parameters.

---> Apple Adds MPEG-1 Extension to QuickTime

Apple Computer, announced availability of its QuickTime MPEG 
extension, enabling full-screen, software-only playback of 
MPEG-1 and VideoCD audio/video files on PowerPC Mac OS 
computers. It can be downloaded from the QuickTime website at: 
http://quicktime.apple.com/.

---> Panoramic VR Offered

Olivr (http://www.olivr.com) and Evox (http://www.evox.com) 
have announced new products for making Panoramic Virtual 
Reality experiences. Both make a full 360 degree scenes that 
can be explored in real time, via a standard 14.4K modem.

Olivr’s product includes a tool kit, for engineers to create 
virtual scenes, and uses a combination of wavelet and fractal 
compression techniques.

Since wavelets work by compressing the entire images, rather 
than line by line as JPEG does, the scenes are progressively 
rendered from fuzzy to clear, yielding a more real-time 
experience. You can download a free viewer from Olivr’s 
website.

---> Zoran/CompCore Announces DVD Player S/W

CompCore (http://www.compcore.com) , recently acquired by 
MPEG/JPEG chip maker, Zoran (http://www.zoran.com), has 
announced it will offer DVD play solutions for PCs. CompCore 
is a leader in software-based MPEG players.

The DVD solutions are distributed as ActiveX modules 
supporting full-motion MPEG-2 playback with AC-3 audio. It is 
offered in a software-only form, supporting Intel’s new MMX 
multimedia accelerated Pentiums, as well as a hybrid solution 
which will support most major MPEG-2 and AC-3 dedicated 
decoders, in a seamless fashion.

DESIGN

---> Web Pages To Get “Style Sheets”

One of the more awkward things about web pages is that there 
is very little control over typography. Savvy designers 
overcome this limitation by creating bitmap images of their 
graphics, with the text embedded within. This makes web pages 
very slow.

To solve this problem, Microsoft is spearheading a new web 
standard, called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This will allow 
designers to set up templates, similar to those found in 
Microsoft Word, to specify the various attributes of type, and 
have it faithfully reproduced via the browser. 
(http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Style)

                                  ###