 In This Issue
Universal Serial Bus
DSP Solutions
Get ready for the 1997 DSP Solutions Challenge
Packard Bell to offer high-speed x2 modems
From the mouths of babes an industry was born
TI discounts DSP development tools
Mixed Signal
Product Update |
From the mouths of babes an industry was bornBy Gene Frantz, TI Fellow In the late '70s, an overseas military organization requiring leading-edge, high-tech equipment put in a call to a Texas Instruments organization that made an educational toy called "Speak & Spell." This high-tech organization seemed rather sheepish about calling a toy company, but TI had created breakthrough speech synthesis that no one else could match.
Inquiries like this one helped TI realize what a truly special product we had developed. They started us on the path to introducing, in 1982, the world's first programmable digital signal processor (DSP). Today, 15 years later, we still maintain the lead in DSP Solutions. Until Speak & Spell hit the market, pundits of the semiconductor industry were convinced that speech synthesis was impossible. A group of very creative people at TI approached the task in a new way, and our breakthrough toy was the result. Never say neverIn the years since Speak & Spell, most so-called pundits have learned to avoid the word "impossible." They have often seen how DSP advances and related innovations can wreak miracles.Medical science, for example, now believes that DSP Solutions can open new worlds for doctors and patients. Artificial limbs that synthesize feeling and send messages straight to the brain. Electronic eyes that accurately simulate human sight. Diagnostic devices many times more versatile than today's magnetic resonance imaging systems. The communications industry also sees revolutionary change on the horizon. Advanced DSPs will enable modems that dwarf today's technology to deliver six megabytes per second over ordinary telephone lines. They will permit pocket-sized devices to carry video telephone, satellite television and fully imaged documents to remote locations. They will bring us newspapers that look like today's front page but display on folding flat screens a user can read on the bus. In these and thousands of other applications -- many that we cannot yet imagine -- TI's Digital Signal Processing Solutions promise to change our lives. Fifteen years of experience with DSPs have taught us that almost anything is possible. Applications: Some expected, some surprisingThe DSP we offered to semiconductor customers in 1982 was the TMS32010. It could perform about 5 million instructions per second (MIPS), a significant advance in processing performance. In the second generation, the TMS32020 and the TMS320C25, we doubled performance and cut cost in half. Our customers began to discover the potential of DSPs.For example, the hard disk drive industry was facing a barrier in the early '80s that was inhibiting its growth. The industry needed faster drives and disks that could store more data. Optical drives were the apparent answer, but they required more computational performance than standard microcontrollers could deliver. In DSPs from TI, hard disk drive makers found the solutions. They were able to store more data on smaller disks and write and retrieve it much faster than before. They also enjoyed benefits in time-to-market that arose from the programmability of DSPs and from TI's self-test features that speeded diagnostics and debugging. Tests and tools were a keyTI designed development tools for use on PCs when other toolmakers relied on dedicated workstations. That innovation, coupled with our commitment to high-level programming languages, such as C, helped us stretch our lead in DSP Solutions.Over the past 15 years, TI has chalked up a lot of milestones in telecommunications, wireless telephony, hard disk drives, modems and scores of other applications. Today, our DSP Solutions -- including mixed-signal devices, ASICs, tools and design expertise -- comprise a business of $2 billion to $5 billion a year and growing. Our message is clearAnd we certainly haven't stopped innovating. In just the past 12 months, we have introduced DSP technology that boosts modem speed from 28,800 bytes per second to 56,000 baud. We have developed DSPs that operate at less than 1 V. Most recently, we announced the TMS320C6x family of devices that perform 1,600 MIPS, about 10 times the best available elsewhere. By no means are we through. Our product roadmap anticipates 3,000 MIPS and more. TI today is the Digital Signal Processing Solutions company. We intend to stay that way. |