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DALLAS (Oct. 22, 1998) – Texas Instruments today introduced an expansion of its world leading analog and mixed-signal products to include its new Spreeta technology. Combined with a TI digital signal processor (DSP), Spreeta will allow real-time, on-site sensing and control in a variety of applications including food and beverage processing, water quality, environmental monitoring and hazardous materials management. This type of distributed electronic sensing is expected to enable many new quality control applications as well as revolutionize the way testing is presently done -- moving it from suspect samples analyzed in central laboratories toward real-time inspection, increasing quality assurance for the consumer.

"The real-time processing capability of DSPs coupled with our unique Spreeta technology will allow food and beverage processors, as well as vendors, to more effectively monitor their product quality and make immediate adjustments at the first sign of a quality issue," said Rick Carr, Strategic Business Manager for Analytical Sensors at Texas Instruments and an inventor of the core technology. "Catching these problems quickly and conveniently will eliminate many costs and concerns for manufacturers, distributors, vendors, and ultimately consumers."

"The world consumes 50 billion beverages every day including soft drinks, water, juice, coffee, tea, milk, beer and wine. Spreeta is applicable to all these areas, and will help users identify spoiled milk, bad orange juice or a watered-down soft drink before the consumer ever takes a drink," said Dr. Jerry Elkind, Research and Development Manager for Analytical Sensors at Texas Instruments. "It also can help measure the quality of cooking oil in deep fryers. Given Spreeta's usefulness in these areas, it is easy to see why TI is excited about this ground-breaking technology and the many ways it will improve people's lives."

In general, Spreeta can be applied to measure quality or composition information in virtually any type of liquid. Spreeta is a surface plasmon resonance sensor that integrates all the features needed for real-time, direct sensing of chemical and biological substances. In a single electronic component smaller than a matchbox, Spreeta seamlessly combines multiple semiconductor technologies, including an integral CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) chip for signal quantification. When coupled with a DSP (specialized integrated circuits that are often 10 times faster or more than general-purpose microprocessors) in a measurement product, the sensor solution can provide immediate measurement and analysis in any setting, such as on the factory floor, in a restaurant, or in the home. With the proper encoding, the sensor can effectively detect properties such as sweetness and poor quality, and specific substances ranging from proteins to explosives.

"We continue to work aggressively with companies to bring Spreeta to market," said Ming Chiang, Vice President for Worldwide Mixed-Signal Products Development for TI. " As the world leader in DSP and analog/mixed-signal technologies, we have the design expertise, production capacity and market knowledge to build distributed analytical sensing into the $30 billion measurement market. Spreeta is so fundamental, versatile and capable that it definitely will create major impact to distributed diagnostic and measurement devices."

Spreeta distributed analytical sensor applications are an excellent example of the proliferation of DSP solutions – systems that combine a DSP with analog and mixed-signal components to produce a real-time, real-world processing application. Texas Instruments is the world leader in both DSPs and analog/mixed-signal technology.

Spreeta distributed analytical sensor applications can be licensed from TI. The licensing agreement is tailored to each customer’s specific application and typically includes training and applications support.

More information on Spreeta, including how to obtain an evaluation kit, is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.ti.com/spreeta

Trademark:
Spreeta is a trademark of Texas Instruments Incorporated.