Texas Instruments outlines chip plans to 2010
December 6, 1999 02:46 PM
By Barbara Etzel
NEW YORK, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Texas Instruments Inc. TXN , the world's leading maker of computer chips used to convert sounds into electronic form, on Monday said that by the year 2010 it would be able to offer the power of today's laptop computer in a device the size of a wristwatch.
The company unveiled a long-term product strategy that it promised would boost its chip performance by more than 15 times by 2005 and more than 230 times over the next decade, based on advances in materials, technology, and manufacturing capacity.
"This is well beyond what is currently envisioned for the digital future," said Gene Frantz, Texas Instruments' senior fellow and new business development manager for digital signal processors, said in a statement.
Texas Instruments said that by 2010 it would create a single chip composed of dozens of digital signal processor (DSP) chips, each with 500 million transistors integrated into it.
Separately, Lucent Technologies LU and Motorola Inc. MOT said they have jointly developed digital signal processor architecture that can reduce the time it takes to develop communications electronic products by about half.
Shares of Texas Instruments rose 5-1/2 to 107. The stock of Motorola gained 10-9/16 at 134-1/2, while that of Lucent fell 1-1/4 at 80-1/2. All trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
Increased performance, along with reduced power consumption and space requirements, will permit a new class of applications such as Internet television, autonomous home robots and real-time videophones, Texas Instruments said.
Lucent's Microelectronics Group, Lucent's communications semiconductor group, and Motorola Inc. said they have jointly developed DSP designs that can reduce by half the time required to develop communications electronic products.
The StarCore SC140 is designed to lead to the development of high-performance telecommunications applications such as wireless phone handsets and antennas, high-speed Internet connections lines and voice over Internet links, they said.
Lucent and Motorola said the technology would be available this month to ship to their customers. Both plan to begin manufacturing products in volume using the technology in early 2000.
Texas Instruments said it expects to boost the performance of its TI TMS320 digital signal chip to 3 trillion instructions per second by 2010.
The company said its plans depend on the increased manufacturing capacity of its newest semiconductor fabrication plant, DMOS-6. The facility will begin production of the latest 300 millimeter wafer technology by the second half of 2001.
The product announcements were timed to coincide with the Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), a week-long conference of chip industry researchers, getting underway in Washington Monday.
Texas Instruments pioneered the integrated circuit in 1958 and the first commercial DSP in 1982. It holds about 47 percent of the world's programmable DSP market. That market is seen growing by 30 percent a year for the next five years, the company said, citing the research firm Forward Concepts.
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