TI & DSPs--through the years Great moments in DSPS history

TI & DSPs—through the years A winning combination Fifteen years ago, TI introduced the first commercial DSP. Today, these sophisticated ICs are the muscle behind innovations in nearly every electronic arena. Modems, wireless communications, hard-disk drives, speech recognition, audio/video and imaging, set-top boxes, automobiles, industrial control and navigation systems—just to name a few. And in the next century, TI DSP Solutions will be the catalyst for a myriad of applications that connect users with the digital world. Why DSP Solutions from TI? It’s no secret in the electronics industry: when you talk about DSP Solutions, you’re talking about Texas Instruments. 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 to meet customers’ needs. 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. Products like the recently introduced TMS320C6x generation reinforce TI’s technology commitment to its customers. A combination of TI’s highly advanced very-long instruction word (VLIW) architecture and the industry’s most efficient C compiler, this device is 10 times more powerful than any previous DSP. The ’C6x speeds up new product development, shortens time-to-market, and eases software development so significantly that it is shifting the DSP engineering paradigm from hardware to software. Beyond DSPs themselves, TI also delivers total solutions. Optimized mixed-signal, analog, memory and software tools help designers get cost-effective DSP designs to market quickly. Add unparalleled support, like a web site with downloadable data sheets, on-line labs, and the industry’s widest array of third-party developers and it’s easy to see why TI has more than 30,000 customers building breakthrough products with TMS320 DSP Solutions. And TI has the technology to take DSP design into the next century. TI’s 125-million-transistor-on-a-single-chip TImeline™ technology increases by an order of magnitude very-large-scale-integration (VLSI) design for DSP solutions and other logic components. And foretelling the future of low-power, high-performance computing, TI demonstrated at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February, 1997, the industry’s first successful programmable DSP that performs all the functions of a standard commercial device at 1 volt and below. 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™ learning aids for children, on the other. 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. Imagination is the fuel for innovation. For the past 15 years, TI DSP Solutions have given both industry leaders and students the ability to make their design dreams a reality. It’s the technology that has allowed them to breathe new performance possibilities into existing designs as well as create applications previously unimagined. And the next 15 years? TI DSP Solutions will be there—to help you create a future only you can imagine. The future of technology is DSP. The future of DSP is TI.