Greenhouse grows big ideas

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Greenhouse grows big ideas

Tuesday, December 21, 1999

This glimpse of the future comes courtesy of the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse, a consortium seeking to build a computer chip design industry in Western Pennsylvania.

The group yesterday announced $1.9 million in awards to finance 10 futuristic research projects.

The work could spur the creation of new commercial products to be built in the region, said Chuck Brandt, the consortium's chief technical officer. The research winners include:

Evolutionary Systems Inc., Pittsburgh, for development of a wearable computer the size of a deck of cards with a 600MHz processor and a 340 MB hard drive.

· Maya Design Group, Pittsburgh, to develop a functional Personal Information Portal device combining cordless telephone, TV/VR/DVD remote control, Web access and other functions.

·University of Pittsburgh for development of a voice-controlled Web browser.

Carnegie Mellon University for development of computer-driven design tools to produce entire computer systems on a single chip containing some 100 million transistors running at speeds up to 3,000 MHz.

Penn State University to develop an optical antenna system to enable easy high-speed wireless networking in homes and offices.

Penn State received funding for three additional projects, while CMU and Pitt each had one other project funded.