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By Dan Reynolds, Vice President of the Semiconductor Group and Manager of the Mixed Signal Products Semiconductor Group
If you get mixed signals from your boss, Texas Instruments can't help you. But if you need to mix analog and digital signals in a system or subsystem requiring a DSP (digital signal processor) Solution, TI probably has the answer.
As the world's leading provider of DSPs, TI also manufactures the whole range of semiconductor devices required in mixed signal applications. In addition to DSPs optimized to satisfy a variety of design care-abouts - low price, high performance, power consumption, programmability, etc. - the company also offers the analog/digital converters, RF, linear devices, data interfaces, ASICs and memory you need for a complete solution.
Along with the hardware, TI provides software libraries and development tools to help speed the design process and get new products to market quickly. TI works closely with customers to tailor DSP Solutions precisely to individual design and technical requirements.
Of course, we at TI know that we are not your only possible source for the silicon, software or expertise you need to create a DSP Solution. Other vendors also offer quality semiconductor products that can fit together into workable systems or sub-systems. But there are at least three good reasons why TI is the best choice for designers who need DSP Solutions.
First, TI manufactures a broad range of semiconductor products designed to work together. Ours is the only company that can offer a complete, multi-component DSP Solution from a single vendor.
One-stop shopping is convenient, of course, but the big reason why the TI product range makes a difference is that purchasing devices from a single vendor can significantly reduce design problems and improve a customer's time to market. Analog ICs vary from one vendor to another in such characteristics as timing requirements, partitioning, resolution and supply voltage levels. DSPs may differ as well.
Mixing devices from several vendors can be frustrating. Frequently, such combinations require quite a lot of extra circuitry simply to overcome differences in specifications.
For more than four years, TI's DSP and mixed signal device groups have worked together closely to develop complementary products. As a result, our products can help you develop a DSP Solution with fewer design problems, greater cost effectiveness and shorter time to market.
Second, TI can tailor the right DSP Solution to suit a customer's needs. We know that, even within the same industry, designers may have very different ideas about how things should be partitioned, how things should be implemented and so on. Our range of DSP and mixed signal products is broad enough and flexible enough to accom- modate such differences in design theory.
We also know that different kinds of systems require varying combinations of integrated circuit characteristics. A cellular phone maker, for example, may not need lightning performance but may demand low cost and power economy. On the other hand, a designer of a V.34 modem needs this super high-speed performance to reach a 28.8Kbits-per-second data transfer rate. TI products can hit the right "sweet spot" for this application and for new applications that are evolving.
A third reason for choosing TI products for mixed signal DSP applications is our commitment to the technology. We recently created three new business entities designed to develop and market DSP Solutions our customers need. These new entities use TI's mixed-signal and DSP capabilities to address high-growth market segments, such as wireless communications, hard disk drives and networks.
The reason for our commitment is simple. DSP Solutions represent an enormous emerging market, and we are determined to be the top vendor in that market.
Right now, we peg overall demand for DSP Solutions at about $2 billion a year. Our projections show that the market will grow to $10 billion by the year 2000.
What's more, we find that in some segments of the DSPS market, the value of the required mixed signal devices exceeds the value of the DSP. In modems, for example, every 60 cents worth of DSPs represents about a dollar's worth of mixed signal chips.
We are going after all of this business, and we are doing it by producing the solutions customers want. TI is a major player across the whole spectrum of hardware, software and services included in a DSP Solution.
These offerings coupled with TI's well known high-volume, low cost manufacturing capability ensure customers in these fast growing applications that TI is in a good position to help drive down total system costs and widen customers' market opportunities. TI is playing to win.
July - August 1995, vol. 12, no. 5