TI Executive Marks 25 Years of DSP Technology, Promises to Continue Innovation and Create New Market Opportunities

DALLAS, March 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- "The next 25 years of digital signal processing technology will literally integrate hundreds of processors on a single chip to conceive applications beyond our imagination," said Mike Hames, senior vice president, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI). Addressing electronics industry leaders in his keynote remarks today to open the 5th annual Texas Instruments Developer Conference (TIDC), Hames envisions a world where clothing can alert you of medical problems, autonomous vehicles will communicate with each other to warn of upcoming delays, security systems identify friend or foe and react accordingly and portable media devices give you remote access to every electronic device and piece of data you own. For more information visit: http://www.ti.com/pulse.

In 1982, the world saw the first successful digital signal processor (DSP) - TI's TMS320C10. "Almost 10 billion DSPs have shipped since the first DSP was introduced," according to Will Strauss, president of industry analyst firm, Forward Concepts. Strauss adds, "TI has shipped half that number."

In the beginning, TI's TMS320(TM) DSP family served hard disc drives and modems running at 2400 bits per second. Now 25 years later, DSPs power DSL modems at 1 megabit per second. Digital signal processing has revolutionized our lives on a daily basis, fostering the development of broadband communications, mobile phones, MP3 players, Voice-over-IP, and digital still cameras, demonstrating that DSP has evolved into the catalyst for innovation to make technologies never before conceived ubiquitous. Hames is committed to advancing innovation to achieve similar results, making DSP an essential technology in additional markets over the coming 25 years.

Forward Concepts projects the DSP market will experience a 12 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years. Strauss says, "DSP technology is poised to deliver advancements far greater than those of the first 25 years and will make the world safer, smarter and more connected than ever before."

Digital signal processing is a catalyst for new markets and is triggered by TI's DSP as the core technology that can be integrated with other devices, such as hardware accelerators, ARMcores and peripherals. The result is higher performing systems-on-chips (SoCs) optimized for their specific class of applications to expand the universe of unique and exciting DSP-enabled products. These open, optimized SoCs possess the right software and development tools that allow a larger group of developers with a wider variety of expertise to add additional features and functionality to their designs. Existing application spaces will continue to be revolutionized by advancing DSP technology; new applications will become a reality as quickly as they are conceived.

The potential for the next 25 years of digital signal processing is profound, as are the challenges it lays out for the industry. TI is working with customers to embrace these technical challenges, as hundreds of processors will be integrated on a single, three-dimensional chip and large- scale, parallel processing becomes standard. As a result of these new innovations on the processor, the software and development tools will follow suit and be seamlessly integrated with all hardware. Development tools must evolve to enable developers to write multiple tasks across multiple processors, and programming languages may need to change to accomplish this. With its expertise, technology and industry collaboration, TI is poised to address these challenges just as it has consistently conquered performance, power and price obstacles throughout the industry.

"One of the biggest limitations we face as a society is our ability to imagine and accept new applications. There is no doubt digital signal processing technology will impact the exponential growth of new innovations quickly and elegantly," said Gene Frantz, principle fellow, TI. "We are at a thrilling time in history, and life as we know it is about to change. It's already happening - with TI signal-processing technology our customers are making it possible."

About the Texas Instruments Developer Conference

The TI Developer Conference (TIDC) is the industry's leading annual event featuring the latest in advanced digital signal processing, high-performance analog and micro controller system designs. TIDC Worldwide 2007 will be held March 7 - 9, 2007 at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas. The conference offers hands-on interaction and intensive educational sessions with cutting- edge products designed to empower the development of the next-generation of video, audio, communications and industrial applications. For more information, visit http://www.ti.com/tidc2007.

About Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments Incorporated provides innovative DSP and analog technologies to meet our customers' real world signal processing requirements. In addition to Semiconductor, the company includes the Education Technology business. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has manufacturing, design or sales operations in more than 25 countries.

Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web at http://www.ti.com/.

Trademarks

TMS320 is a trademark of Texas Instruments. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.