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The agreement will allow TI to deliver Java™ capabilities on any Texas Instruments processor platform, including TI’s industry-leading TMS320 family of digital signal processors (DSPs), for end equipments such as digital cellular phones, pagers, and wireless local loop terminals.

"In researching future wireless communications needs, TI believes multimedia network-based services such as wireless Internet access and video phones will drive this marketplace and that digital signal processing and software will be the key underlying technologies to make this happen," said Gilles Delfassy, worldwide general manager of TI’s Wireless Communications Business Unit and Semiconductor Group vice president. "TI’s licensing of EmbeddedJava and PersonalJava is an important step toward building a software platform to integrate with existing hardware platform products such as its digital baseband platform for wireless communications systems."

Personal communications products based on Java-enabled digital signal processing will be able to derive functionality from the wireless network or the Internet. Applications will not have to be resident in the equipment. Rather, the individual applications will be downloaded from the network upon request. This approach will create a new class of independent software developers and will enhance revenue opportunities for wireless service providers in an increasingly competitive environment.

The TI Wireless Communications Business Unit will be incorporating the EmbeddedJava and PersonalJava specifications into its wireless communications platforms. TI also will have the right to offer a Java option on any of its processor platforms targeted at embedded systems for consumer products. The company is currently working with its customers and third parties to define how Java technology will be packaged and delivered, and it plans to offer Java-enabled wireless communications products based on its digital baseband platform in 1998.

TI’s industry-leading digital baseband platform integrates all the digital baseband functions necessary for the design of digital cellular telephones using any transmission standard in the world. With Java, TI will be able to complement its digital baseband platform with a software platform which facilitates the delivery of enhanced information capabilities such as map-based navigation, speech recognition and fixed image-based services over cellular networks.

"The TI digital baseband platform has been incorporated into more than half of the digital cellular phones manufactured worldwide in 1997, making us the leading digital cellular DSP supplier worldwide," continued Delfassy. "TI is committed to helping our wireless customers continue to grow their competitive edge by providing hardware/software platforms that not only reduce time-to-market, but increase opportunities for consumer product differentiation via software."

"We are delighted that TI has chosen to license both our EmbeddedJava and PersonalJava specifications," said Jon Kannegaard, vice president of software products at Sun Microsystems JavaSoft division. "The synergy of the Java technology combined with TI’s digital signal processing technology will further broaden the reach of Java into future wireless communications systems."

PersonalJava is a new Java Application Environment (JAE) for network-connectable applications on personal consumer devices for mobile, home, or office tasks. PersonalJava is designed to specifically address resource-limited environments, with the addition of specific features required by consumer applications. Similarly, EmbeddedJava can be used in a variety of products including mobile phones, pagers, process control, instrumentation, office peripherals, and networking routers and switches. EmbeddedJava applications run on real-time operating systems, and are optimized for the constraints of small memory footprints and diverse visual displays.