Texas Instruments announced today that Dilip Krishnan
and Showbhik Kalra, both students at NTU, will share the US$100,000
grand prize in the company's 
DSP Solutions Challenge, a contest
to encourage college engineering students worldwide to use digital
signal processors (DSPs) for new applications. DSPs are high-speed,
math-intensive, programmable integrated circuits or chips that
are revolutionizing electronics in the '90s, much as the microprocessor
did computers in the '80s. The Singapore team was one of the
three finalist teams selected from an original worldwide pool
of 230 teams.
Whether recorded on flammable nitrate-based film that decays rapidly or made with today's safer, acetate-based film, both professional and home movies are susceptible to degradation by gouges, scratches and the accumulation of dirt. To date, the restoration of a classic motion picture has been a labor-intensive, costly undertaking. For example, the restoration of Snow White took 18 weeks with 60 workstation operators using 40 workstations in three shifts a day, seven days a week.
The system that Krishnan and Kalra helped develop opens the way to more advanced systems that could handle such projects automatically, requiring less time, less money and fewer people. Using parallel processing techniques on a network of DSPs, the Singapore motion picture restoration system erases damaged areas of the film and fills in the resulting empty space with information captured automatically from elsewhere in the film.
According to Dr. Chong Man Nang, DSP lecturer in NTU's School of Applied Science and advisor to the Singapore team, "The system that these two students developed for the DSP Challenge has important implications for the worldwide entertainment industry because it will enable the restoration and re-release of old films in significantly less time at much lower costs."
A DSP, which can add and multiply tens of millions of complex formulae per second, is 10 to 50 times more powerful than other computer central processing units (CPUs). Digital signal processing is the technology at the heart of the digital revolution. DSPs are in such products and applications as digital cellular phones, hard disk drives, modems and personal computer multimedia. Texas Instruments is the world's leading provider of digital signal processing solutions, with a 44 percent market share in DSP, according to industry analyst Will Strauss of Forward Concepts.
"There's no doubt that DSPs will play an increasingly significant role in our lives, and students in universities today need experience working with the technologies to be prepared to design the systems of the future," said Michael Hames, vice president, TI semiconductor group and worldwide DSP manager. "Entertainment using computing techniques like the Singapore team's will affect the way we live, work, and play, enabling us to save both classic motion pictures and old family home movies for future generations to enjoy."
The students were thrilled with their victory today. "Being an engineer is the fulfillment of a dream I had as a child. I wanted to work with advanced technologies in a very practical way. That's exactly what we did on this project," said Krishnan.
"This project enabled us to create a system that will improve the world we live in, and our victory demonstrates how important systems like ours will be in the future," said Kalra.
TI received entries from more than 230 teams representing more than 700 students from 26 countries. Eight semi-finalist teams were awarded US$1,000. Each of the three finalist teams won an additional US$9,000. The members of the Singapore team will each share the US$100,000 grand prize. The other two finalist teams were the University of Maryland and Ecole Francaise d'Electronique et d'Informatique, France.
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