ADI to announce new DSPs today.
biz.yahoo.com
Sunday June 21, 6:00 pm Eastern Time
Analog Devices to unveil new
line of voice chips
NORWOOD, Mass., Juna 21 (Reuters) - Analog
Devices Inc. (ADI - news) will Monday unveil a
new generation of high-performance voice
processing chips that promise to offer speeds 10
times faster than the company's existing products.
The company will introduce the second generation
of its SHARC 32-bit Digital Signal Processor
(DSPs) designs and three new customers of the
chip, including Hewlett-Packard Co. (HWP -
news).
DSPs are semiconductors that process electric
signals like sounds, images, radio transmissions,
and measurements, and converts them into a digital
form that can be used by a computer.
The advance could make possible computers with
speaker voice recognition -- an elusive goal
requiring a huge amount of processing horsepower,
analysts said.
To identify customers, automated teller banking
machines could recognize individual voices
instead of requiring the customer to type in a
password.
Analog said the new chip designs will be used to
create the world's fastest 32-bit general purpose
DSPs for use by manufacturers in a wide range of
products for medical imaging, radar and sonar
systems and three-dimensional graphics.
Tom Starnes, an industry analyst with market
research firm Dataquest, said the new chip designs
will shore up Analog's existing SHARC line,
which has dominated the high-power end of the
DSP business since it was introduced in 1992.
However, Analog's position has been challenged
by new high power DSPs introduced by rivals
Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN - news) and Lucent
Technologies Inc. (LU - news) in the last year, he
said.
In terms of overall market share in 1997, Texas
Instruments held about 45 percent, Lucent had 28
percent and Analog Devices and Motorola Inc.
(MOT - news) each held 12 percent, according to
statistics from Forward Concepts Co, a Tempe,
Ariz. market research firm.
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