Alliances abound

Alliances abound

To enable secure Internet and electronic commerce, Thomson-CSF Semiconducteurs Specifiques (Totowa, NJ) and Oxford Micro Devices Inc. (Shelton, CT) are working together to develop a low-cost, encrypted, fingerprint-capture and verification system that will be smaller than a credit-card calculator.

National Semiconductor Corp. (Santa Clara, CA) and Three-Five Systems Inc. (Tempe, AZ) have formed a strategic relationship for the development and manufacture of liquid-crystal-on-silicon microdisplays. These new displays are expected to deliver SVGA 800 ¥ 600-pixel resolution in 0.5-in.-diagonal screens and SXGA 1280 ¥ 1024-pixel resolution in 0.8-in.-diagonal screens for pagers and cellular phones.