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An extraordinary kind of computer chip is transforming the world around us -- and it's not the microprocessor that you've been hearing so much about since the 1980s. Digital signal processors, or DSPs, have made it possible for virtually anyone to access technological marvels such as cellular telephones, fax machines and answering machines.
Not only are DSPs faster at processing data than any other chip, they are inexpensive -- a combination that has made today's technological wonders reliable and affordable. A DSP is 10 to 50 times more powerful than most other computer central processing units (CPUs) in handling math-intensive tasks enabling data to be processed in fractions of seconds. That is why many industries are turning to the DSPs to make more efficient and portable products that benefit consumers.
Today, you'll find DSPs inside everything from dolls that can understand human speech, to cellular telephones that operate with greater clarity, to virtual-reality games that you'll swear are real, all the way to dishwashers and toaster ovens that operate with super efficiency to dramatically lower energy consumption.
Texas Instruments pioneered digital signal processing solutions in 1982 when the company developed a single computer chip that could process digital information faster than any other chip previously available. By coupling this DSP chip with the company's existing integrated circuits that help modify and convert digital signals for processing, Texas Instruments opened the door to the "Information Age" for millions of people worldwide.
Today, Texas Instruments provides total DSP system solutions -- the core DSP and its supporting accessory technologies -- to make possible many things we take for granted, including:
· Fax machines, which used to be very expensive, are now based on digital signal processing solutions which process pictures, turning them into sounds that go out over the phone and are then turned back into pictures by a DSP on another fax machine. This approach has made fax machines affordable, even to the general public.
· Worldwide telephone systems work with greater clarity than ever before because DSPs reduce noise, echoes and other disturbances. Cellular phone systems are able to service greater numbers of customers because DSPs can compress a huge number of calls into a very compact transmission line space.
· Telephone answering machines tell us the time a message was left thanks to a DSP-based computer speech feature.
· Dolls and other toys understand our children's spoken words, and even answer back using DSPs that turn words into digital numbers which allow the toys to understand and then even reply.
· Our cars also have benefited from DSPs. Unbelievably smooth rides are made possible by DSPs that automatically adjust a car's suspension as it encounters bumps in the road. Virtually silent interiors are possible, thanks to DSPs that "listen" to road, engine, and other noise, and then intelligently emit "anti-noise" to exactly counteract what they "hear."
· Even personal computers are affected by digital signal processing solutions. Ever notice how computers are getting physically smaller and much less expensive while managing to squeeze in more and more data? DSPs can control the tiny mechanical parts of a hard disk drive in the computer with microscopic precision, allowing more data to be stored than ever before, for a lot less money.
· Nearly all computer modems, the equipment that lets our computers talk to each other over phone lines, are controlled by digital signal processing solutions, too.
· Cameras use DSPs to provide exceptional accuracy in figuring out how long a picture exposure should be. It's easy for a DSP to "look" at the scene coming through a camera lens, and based on its software-endowed knowledge of photography (one that emulates the intuition of the world's best photographers), decide just when the film has been exposed long enough.
It's difficult to imagine how a DSP computer chip can do all these things that happen so quickly. But most DSPs can process more than 100 million numbers every second. So, if a car goes over a bump, it might take one-tenth of a second for the wheel to go up and down. During that tenth of a second, a DSP can easily process the 2,000 or so numbers that come from circuits that sense the wheel's up-and-down motion, and decide how to adjust the car's suspension to immediately absorb the impact of the bump. What seems like an instant to us can be an eternity for a DSP system.
A few of the other uses for DSPs:
These emerging and high-growth applications require the super-fast processing provided by a digital signal processing solution. As a result, leading industry analyst Will Strauss predicts that the DSP market, which today is a $995 million industry, will be a $4.5 billion market by the 1999.
Texas Instruments is poised to capitalize on this burgeoning market opportunity. Today, Texas Instruments is the worldwide DSP market share leader, according to industry analysts, and the company is considered the world innovator in DSP technology. Texas Instruments' DSP business has grown by more than 40 percent annually for the past four to five years -- outpacing the overall industry's growth.
In addition to the anticipated growth of the core DSP business, Texas Instruments envisions the total market for digital signal processing solutions to be as much as $10 billion by the year 2000 -- or the same size as today's lauded microprocessor market. According to the company, the total digital signal processing solutions market already reached an estimated $2 billion in 1994. This is based on Texas Instruments' estimates that, for every dollar of digital signal processors sold, there is at least one additional dollar sold of supporting accessory chips (e.g., memory chips and analog-to-digital converters).
Digital signal processing solutions, because of their speed and number-crunching abilities, are becoming the technologies that affect the lives of more people than probably any other computing technology. Digital signal processing solutions continue to expand, enriching ordinary activities in innumerable ways. Texas Instruments, having pioneered the DSP revolution, will continue to lead the industry in the development and use of these applications.
Digital: Basically, computers can't understand anything that isn't a number. So, if you make something digital, you're converting it into numbers. In order for computers to interact with the real living world around them, like we do with our senses, things like sound, temperature, pressure or color need to be assigned numeric values that computers can understand. There are special electronic circuits that change what's happening in the world around us into numbers for computers to look at or sense.
Signals: Scientists call all that goes on in the world around us -- like sound, temperature, pressure, or color -- "signals." It is these signals that get converted to numbers for the benefit of computers.
Processing: In order to interact with the real world like we do, computers work with the numbers that come from these real-world signals. If the numbers are getting bigger, it might mean that a sound is getting louder or higher, a temperature is getting hotter or a color is getting brighter. Our own senses work the same way. And just as our senses give us the information we need to react to changes in the world around us -- like turning down the thermostat if the room gets too hot -- a computer can make adjustments to things around it in response to processing numbers from digital signals. Computers do this with special chips that change numbers back into signals that the real world can understand again.
Digital Signal Processing: Just like us, DSP chips sense the world around them, evaluate what they sense, and make changes based on those digital "sensations." The DSP, working as the core of a system, interacts with complementary technologies that modify and convert digital signals to make a system work. The result is a digital signal processing solution that enables a variety of exciting products and technologies.
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