Related Documentation:
 Changing the World With DSPs Future Applications The Buzz on DSP Solutions
TI Celebrates 15 Years of DSPs
Out of the Mouths of Babes
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No company is doing more to bring about these DSP transformations than
Texas Instruments. For 15 years, since TI introduced its first
general-purpose programmable DSP in 1982, the company has led the industry
in DSP technology. During that time, TI DSPs have risen in performance from
five million instructions per second (MIPS) to 1600 MIPS, which means file
downloading time on the Internet could be reduced from 10 minutes to less
than five seconds. At the same time, DSP devices that cost hundreds of
dollars when they were introduced in the early 1980s can now be purchased
for $5 or less.
TI's multiple TMS320 DSP generations now offer the industry's widest
selection of programmable DSPs, and application-specific and customizable
processors extend the company's DSP technology into specialized areas. In
1996 TI supplied almost half of the programmable DSPs in use, or twice as
much as the nearest competitor, according to leading industry analysts.
DSP Solutions: TI's Strategic Asset
TI is unique among integrated circuit (IC) vendors in having the
capability to supply a wide variety of analog/mixed-signal, memory and logic
functions either discretely or integrated on a single chip along with a core
DSP. For system manufacturers, sets of these interrelated functions,
together with the necessary DSP development tools, provide complete digital
signal processing solutions that minimize design complexity, save
time-to-market and enhance the potential for profit from a new product.
"The future of the digital world depends on DSPs," said Rich Templeton,
TI executive vice president and Semiconductor Group president, explaining
the company's strategic rationale. "TI's semiconductor business is
structured to provide TI customers not only with leading DSP technology and
products, but also with the system-level DSP solutions needed to cut
development time and enhance product applications."
TI's confidence in the future of DSP has led the company to strengthen
its leadership position in DSP solutions. To help customers rapidly bring
products to market and deliver complete system-level solutions, TI has
acquired companies with technologies that complement its DSP business.
These acquisitions include Silicon Systems Inc., a leading design firm for
mass storage systems; Tartan, a premier DSP software tools development
company; and Intersect, a mass storage software company. TI's ongoing
commitment to developing DSP solutions promises to increase its lead even
further in a market predicted to grow to more than $12 billion by the year
2000.
New Product Introductions
Other important introductions include the 1996 announcement of TI's
125-million-transistor-on-a-single-chip TImeline technology, which increases
by an order of magnitude very-large-scale-integration (VLSI) design for DSP
solutions and other logic components. The TMS320C8x released in 1994
integrated for the first time five high-performance processors on a single
chip. And foretelling the future of low-power, high-performance computing,
TI disclosed the successful demonstration of the industry's first
programmable DSP that performs all the functions of a standard commercial
device at 1 volt and below at the International Solid-State Circuits
Conference (ISSCC) in February, 1997.
Faith in the Future
Each of these innovations represents the culmination of a significant
development effort based on TI's belief in the future of DSPs. This faith
goes back to the 1970s, when digital signal processing was seen as a niche
technology, useful primarily for intense number crunching applications such
as missile guidance and speech recognition. TI undertook
fundamental research in DSP technology, leading to applications as diverse
as military systems, on the one hand, and consumer products such as the
Speak & Spell (tm) learning aids for children, on the other hand. TI also
pioneered the DSP university program to encourage engineering faculty and
students at major universities to broaden the horizons of the new DSP
technology.
"From the very beginning, we knew we had a tremendous opportunity with
DSPs," recalled Gene Frantz, TI Fellow and DSP business development manager.
"But we had to let the world know, too. So we spent years patiently
explaining the value of DSPs to customers, software and tools developers,
university professors, analysts, and anyone else who would listen. Now the
DSP market is taking off, and we're seeing the results of
that evangelizing. For those of us involved with DSPs at TI, it paid to be
ahead of our time."
A History of Product Innovation
In 1982, TI research led to the development and introduction of the
fixed-point TMS32010, its first general-purpose programmable DSP for
commercial use. Other TI DSP generations followed in the next few years,
some as enhancements of the fixed-point architecture, others as
floating-point devices. Among the latter, the TMS320C40 broke new ground in
providing an architecture specifically designed to support DSP parallel
processing for significant performance increase.
While TI was enhancing DSP architectures, it was also improving its
manufacturing processes. During the same years that it introduced its first
DSPs, TI standardized its CMOS wafer processes for high-speed IC integration
and is continuing to blaze the trail into the future with the TImeline
process. Process standardization enabled the company to combine DSP core
designs with application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design
methodologies in the early 1990s to create the industry's first customizable
DSPs (cDSP(tm)s). Because of its product range and manufacturing strength,
TI still leads the industry in its capability to introduce new DSP products
quickly through design customization.
As the DSP product line advanced, so did DSP support tools. From the
beginning, TI provided a full suite of tools, including debuggers, emulators
and other development tools, including the first DSP development software to
run on a personal computer. To make a wide variety of tools and standard
software modules available to its customers, TI fostered the growth of a
network of third party developers. Through the years, the TMS320 third
party development network -- the largest such group in the industry -- has
continued its symbiotic development along with TI's DSP business. Today, in
addition to tools and modules, third parties offer complete systems and
software to TMS320 customers and often open up important new application
areas for DSPs.
A World of Uses for DSPs
DSPs are increasingly appearing in communications, computers,
automobiles, industrial equipment and many other areas. "When we began
offering TMS320 DSPs in the early 1980s," said Frantz, "we were poised to
take advantage of the every opportunity for DSP applications. We worked
very hard with our customers for application patterns. Designers learned
how to make the best use of DSP technology, and that's when the DSP market
really began to grow."
In the beginning, TI was able to interest some customers in its new DSP
products, but many manufacturers had to be convinced, not only of the design
feasibility of the new devices, but also of their cost efficiency in volume.
Two notable designs in the late 1980s removed all doubts. In one instance,
TMS320 DSPs were used in active suspension systems for Grand Prix racing
cars, putting TI in the winning circle along with its customer Lotus. In
the other design, toy manufacturer Worlds of Wonder created its talking
Julie doll using an inexpensive TMS320 DSP for speech recognition and
synthesis. These designs brought much-deserved acclaim to TI, and convinced
the industry that DSPs could make possible new kinds of electronic
applications, and could do so affordably.
Among the first large-scale success stories for TMS320 DSPs were hard
disk drives, which require high-speed data input and output from the disk.
DSPs have contributed to the massive gains in disk storage capacity in
recent years, due to the extremely accurate control the processors enable in
positioning read/write heads. TI has pursued close development
relationships with leading disk drive manufacturers such as Seagate, with
the result that TMS320-based DSP solutions are the primary selection of the
mass storage industry today.
TI DSP solutions have been key to the success of high-speed modems as
well. DSPs enable the high-speed conversion of analog signals to digital
data. They also allow manufacturers to redesign systems quickly by
reprogramming software, rather than through slower hardware changes. In the
modem market, where standards change rapidly, reprogrammability cuts
development costs and time-to-market. For these reasons, modem
manufacturers such as U.S. Robotics have increasingly turned to TI DSPs for
design flexibility and performance. U.S. Robotics popular x2(tm) 56 Kbps
technology, for instance, is based on TIs DSP solutions.
Digital wireless telephones are another application area where TI DSP
solutions have proven essential. These systems require high performance,
low power consumption, small size and light weight -- all at a low cost. TI
DSP solutions have been so successful in meeting these requirements that
they are used today in more than half the digital wireless
telephones produced worldwide. Ericsson and Nokia, along with other
wireless telephone manufacturers, have come to rely on TI as a developer of
high-performance DSP solutions for their products.
"Today, the wireless market around the world is growing rapidly, thanks
to DSP technology," said Gilles Delfassy, Semiconductor Group vice president
and worldwide general manager for the Wireless Communications Business Unit.
"DSP solutions increase the number of channels available, reduce costs,
provide longer talk time to users, and allow service providers to introduce
new, highly competitive digital services. TI has been in the forefront in
providing DSP solutions to the wireless communications."
TI DSP solutions are also used for motor control in white goods, noise
suppression in automobiles, sound equalization, medical imaging,
videoconferencing, audio-video compression and wireless messaging pagers --
to name only a few of the many applications. In all of these areas and
more, TI's DSP technology combines with system-level expertise gained from
relationships with leading manufacturers to provide leading-edge solutions
for innovative electronics.
Into the New Millennium
The twenty-first century will witness a digital world arising, thanks
to high-speed digital technology. DSP solutions are critical to the success
of this technology, and TI is the industry leader in DSP solutions, with 15
years of experience in creating products that boost performance, simplify
design and cut costs for equipment manufacturers. Just as TI's faith in the
future of digital signal processing has been largely responsible for the
growth of the DSP market until now, so will the company's ongoing commitment
continue to enable advanced uses of DSPs in the years ahead.
"Today our belief in DSPs is stronger than ever," said Michael Hames,
Semiconductor Group vice president and worldwide DSP manager. "We're eager
to see what changes our DSP technology will bring in the next 15 years in
computing, communications, transportation, and industry. Above all, we can
be certain that DSP solutions will play a major role in building the digital
world in the new millennium."
Trademarks: |
Today, few electronic innovations are making changes in the way people
live as fast as digital signal processors (DSPs). A type of microprocessor
specialized for handling vast amounts of data in real time, the DSP is
rapidly making possible new developments in networking and the Internet,
high-speed modems, wireless communications, speech recognition, audio-video
and imaging, set-top boxes, automobiles, hard disk drives,
industrial control and manufacturing, navigation, and a variety of other
areas. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, DSP technology is the key
to connecting the digital world.