MICROELECTRONIC SYSTEMS NEWS
FILENUMBER: 9402
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Texas-Instruments DSP
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DATE: march 1997
TITLE: Texas Instruments New DSP Chip
January 31, 1997 Friday
DALLAS -- Texas Instruments Inc. next week will introduce a computer chip
that can process 1.6 billion instructions per second, a giant leap in
processing power that should make cellular-phone systems and other
communications equipment more efficient.
The new digital-signal processor has about 40 times the processing prowess
of a comparable chip found in an ordinary computer modem. Though the new chip
doesn't move information between two places faster, it allows more information
to be exchanged simultaneously, said Gene Frantz, Texas Instruments '
business
development manager for digital-signal processors.
Used at a phone company switching center or an Internet service company, the
new chip can manipulate signals from 24 calls at once, an operation that
previously required 24 chips.
Future digital-signal processors in the new product family will be designed
for other uses, such as controlling graphics in computers. Texas Instruments
is the leading maker of DSPs with about 45% share of the $2.28 billion
market,
according to Forward Concepts Inc. of Tempe, Ariz.
The company is also one of the top U.S. makers of memory chips. Its stock
rose 7%, or $4.75, to $74.50 in composite New York Stock Exchange trading
yesterday on news that Samsung Electronics Co.'s U.S. unit would reduce
memory-chip production to halt steep price drops.
Texas Instruments ' last major DSP product family, introduced in 1994,
included the first DSP chips with two parallel processing units. In
building
the new product, the company placed eight processing units on a chip and made
them easier to program, a change that makes the chips more versatile.
DSPs are designed to perform a small number of functions effectively and are
found in compact-disk players, wireless phones, digital cameras and other
audiovisual devices. By contrast, general purpose processors, including the
microprocessor in a personal computer, execute instructions less quickly but
are more versatile. The best microprocessors now handle about 600 million
instructions a second.
dbouldin@utk.edu