I'll take a few million of these things being sold every year ...
Nokia to use TI's DSP platform for wireless multimedia phones
A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc.
Story posted 7:30 a.m. EST/4:30 a.m., PST, 5/27/99
NICE, France--Texas Instruments Inc. here today announced that cellular phone giant Nokia Group has selected TI's Open Multimedia Application Platform, based on a highly-integrated digital signal processor, for future wireless information devices. These mobile systems will include a range of features for multimedia phones, communicators and wireless information appliances.
TI's DSP-based platform will be optimized to run a 32-bit operating system, called EPOC, from U.K.-based Symbian, a joint-venture between a half dozen suppliers of wireless phones and systems, including Nokia. By the middle of next year, Finland's Nokia is expected to roll out its first wireless handsets capable of using General Packet Radio Services (GPRS) for data applications. Additional multimedia services, including video and Internet access, are also expected as applications develop in the next few years.
These type of mobile information systems could account for 15% of the total digital cellular phone market in five years, according to TI, which estimates that annual revenues for DSP solutions alone will be worth more than $1 billion in that time frame.
TI said its platform chip will incorporate a embedded DSP, running at 320 million instructions per second, and a 130-MHz RISC processor core, based on the ARM architecture. The integrated circuit will also include high-speed dedicated logic blocks and be processed in a 0.18-micron drawn (0.15-micron effective gate length) CMOS process. According to TI managers, based in Dallas, the platform's DSP core is an unannounced digital signal processor.
"We are excited by the opportunities enabled by our DSP technology in this field," said Gilles Delfassy, vice president for worldwide wireless communications at TI. He declared that the capability to optimize processors for next-generation mobile handsets is "opening up new frontiers in wireless applications."
Nokia--as well as other suppliers of wireless handsets--intends to support a new era of information devices with open systems that can run applications from independent software vendors and DSP developers. "We are happy to ensure that all the building blocks are coming together in devices that will provide consumers with a totally new set of attractive services, such as multimedia messaging and video on the move, " said Yrjo Neuvo, senior vice president of product creation in Nokia Mobile Phones unit.
TI said it will make its multimedia platform available to other wireless systems manufacturers and third party developers in an attempt to stimulate the growth of new applications using Symbian's EPOC multi-tasking C++ operating system. Currently, Symbian says about 2 million units using its EPOC technology have been shipped by mobile communication system suppliers. The year-old joint-venture is owned by Nokia, Ericsson, Matsushita, Motorola, Philips and Psion.
To support the new wireless systems and the EPOC technology, Dallas-based TI promises to offer development chips, a software kit and "clearly defined" Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
"Providing application developers with such powerful processing capability on a single chip, in a design development environment they are familiar with, allows them to design new, high quality applications that will be able to run simultaneously," said TI's Delfassy. "For consumers this kind of chip integration means these future wireless applications information will be available at affordable prices and the low-power consumption level demanded by these portable devices."
TI said a preliminary tool set is now available for software designers to begin implementing applications, and customer designs are expected to start this year with silicon samples being delivered in 2000.
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