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Industry pundits have long predicted that in the future, people will conduct business meetings, visit their doctors, rent a video or even shop for groceries-all using sophisticated information terminals in their homes. These terminals will be connected to a worldwide network of networks that will deliver an abundance of advanced services to offices and neighborhoods.
Several years ago, Dallas-based Texas Instruments (TI) looked into the future and saw what is now called the "information superhighway"-a transmission pipeline for a variety of futuristic new services for consumers and businesses. With this vision in mind, the company made a strategic decision to develop highly integrated semiconductor solutions that enable voice, video and data to be compressed, transported and switched along this network. While the actual introduction of the information superhighway itself is still several years in the future, many of the key technologies needed for its implementation are already available today-from TI:
Digital compression and storage techniques will be key to making technically complex services available to consumers via the information superhighway. In simple terms, data compression packs more signal information into less transmission space or "bandwidth" so it can be moved throughout the network more quickly and easily. This will be particularly important for intricate new offerings that will allow consumers to do everything from seeing real estate before traveling there, to transmitting recipes back home to mom, to paying their bills electronically to getting a medical check-up by videoconference with their doctors.
TI's compression strategy is centered around its advanced line of digital signal processors (DSPs), special semiconductors that take audio or video data-after the company's peripheral products convert it from its native analog format to digital-and pack the information more closely together by using sophisticated compression techniques. As the world's leading provider of DSPs, TI's processors are 10 to 50 times more powerful than other computer central processing units (CPUs), and process information instantly in "real time." This technology is ideal for interactive and multimedia services that will be provided by the information superhighway.
The information superhighway will actually be a patchwork of fiber optic and copper wiring that will provide a transmission pipeline for the future's sophisticated electronic services. Messages conveyed via this pipeline will be encoded in the ones and zeros of computer language and compressed by advanced circuitry for easier storage and transmission. Ultrafast switches will chop the voice, video and data messages into small "packets" that will be dispatched across the network and then sorted, reassembled and delivered at the other end-all at lightning fast speeds.
TI's legacy in networking technology makes the company integral to the success of this worldwide Infobahn. For example, the company's high-performance local area network (LAN) products already are pervasive in personal computers, workstations, servers, inter-networking products and peripherals-critical components of the information superhighway. TI also is a leading supplier of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology, a sophisticated switching technology that can route streams of multimedia traffic at mind-boggling speeds (it will be able to transmit a 3 ½-hour movie, such as Gone With the Wind, in .84 seconds), and a technology that has been described as a cornerstone for the implementation of this vast data network.
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