Nice front page article in Dallas Morning News Business section, except for that IBM comment.
TI develops way to link various chips
Advance could boost leadership in DSP
field
08/27/98
By Alan Goldstein / The Dallas Morning News
Texas Instruments Inc. said Wednesday that it has
developed a process to integrate its flagship product,
digital signal processors, and related chips on a
single sliver of silicon, producing semiconductors that
are smaller, faster and more power-efficient.
The Dallas-based chipmaker said the advance,
which may be in production within three years, could
widen its lead in the market for digital signal
processors, or DSPs, which are used in digital
cellular phones, modems, hard-disk drives and other
electronic products.
So-called "system on a chip" technology is being
pursued aggressively by much of the semiconductor
industry because it offers the possibility of lower
production costs and improved product performance.
TI's announcement comes as competition is heating
up in the DSP business, one of the few segments of
the semiconductor industry that is not in a slump. TI
is the leader in the global DSP industry segment,
with an estimated 45 percent of the market.
Recently, International Business Machines Corp.,
Motorola Inc. and Lucent Technologies Inc. have all
stepped up efforts to challenge TI's dominance in
DSPs, which manipulate sounds and images in the
digital language of computers. IBM has said it wants
to clone a TI digital cell-phone DSP.
"Looking forward, that won't be sufficient," said
Peter Rickert, a senior member of TI's technical
staff.
Instead, Mr. Rickert said, electronics manufacturers
will come to expect the functions of DSPs and
related mixed-signal chips to be integrated. TI also
holds a leading market position in mixed-signal chips.
"Clearly, this plays to TI's strengths," said Will
Strauss, president of Forward Concepts Co., a
market research firm based in Tempe, Ariz.
The chip integration is possible in part because TI
has found a way to use smaller transistors, Mr.
Rickert said. The new technology will pack 400
million transistors on a surface the size of a
fingernail, several times the number on today's
most-advanced chips.
By designing smaller and denser chips, TI can get
more from a standard silicon wafer. Smaller chips
have an added benefit of being faster, because
electrons have a shorter distance to cover. Faster
chips, in turn, command higher prices and are
potentially more profitable.
Some rivals downplayed TI's announcement. An
IBM spokesman said the company assumes TI will
have achieved certain capabilities in production
technologies, including the use of copper in place of
aluminum for wiring the chips. IBM is believed to be
ahead of its rivals in copper-related technology,
which also makes chips faster because it reduces
resistance.
"They'll have to learn to walk before they can run,"
said William O'Leary, spokesman for IBM's chip
division in East Fishkill, N.Y. "To me, this isn't
news."
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