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To: mark cox who wrote (14652)	8/30/2000 12:21:28 PM
From: Pamela Murray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18366

TI Will Use Software To Play Hardball (08/04/00, 5:34 p.m. ET) By Darrell Dunn, Electronic Buyers' News Sitting on the cusp of what it believes will be the most expansive era in electronics history, Texas Instruments has put together a software and support infrastructure that could help it dominate the DSP market for the foreseeable future, according to company executives. TI (stock: TXN) this week unveiled details of its eXpressDSP solution and a new Web-based program for third parties and customers, both of which company executives believe will establish baseline standards that will ensure TI's success in emerging DSP applications. DSP is becoming the most important semiconductor technology of this decade, TI CEO Tom Engibous told more than 900 third-party developers, customers, and university representatives at the company's DSPS Fest 2000 in Houston this week. Since taking TI's helm in 1996, Engibous has ledan overhaul of the company with the goal of focusing on DSP and analog technology, while jettisoning sacred corporate cows and acquiring more than a dozen companies. "Every aspect of the Internet age is touched by a DSP ... and the most interesting applications that'll use a DSP have yet to be invented," Engibous said. "The Internet age is real and marks a fundamental shift, and for everyone in the room there are huge opportunities. ... We want to accelerate, accelerate and make the DSP market larger than anyone ever envisioned." "This is the kind of thing that in the past made Wintel and IBM/DEC so successful," said Bob Frankel, chief software strategist of TI's DSP Software Infrastructure Group, referring to the company's new initiatives. "We don't want to maintain leadership, we will accelerate leadership." In the past year, TI and its third-party software suppliers have been engaged in creating both a base of standard algorithms for use in DSP-powered applications and an RTOS based on TI's BIOS II platform. TI said it believes if it and its third-party partners can establish the software as a de facto standard for emerging Internet and other personal communications equipment, it could create a dominance similar to what Intel has exercised in the PC market for the past decade. TI currently controls nearly half of the general-purpose DSP market, 60 percent of the cellular handset chip market, and is working with nine of the top 10 MP3 player manufacturers, executives said. Expanding its market hold to the level that Intel enjoys in the PC market, however, may be an unattainable goal, analysts said. "No single company is going to dominate to that degree in these emerging markets," said Jeff Bier, general manager of Berkeley Design Technology, Berkeley, Calif. "Companies will choose architectures based on tools, third-party support, and off-the-shelf software modules, and it's clear that TI has a chance to make the most of this opportunity." However, emerging Internet, communications, and converged consumer applications do not have the "incredibly strong need for binary compatibility year after year that's present in the PC world and allowed Intel to achieve what it has," Bier said. Ironically, TI's efforts to improve the ease of programming of its DSPs with a move to C language compilers -- as opposed to traditional assembly code -- should actually make it easier for OEMs to migrate from one architecture to another in the years ahead, Bier said. "[TI's plans for dominance] are very ambitious," said Will Strauss, an analyst at Forward Concepts, Tempe, Ariz. "Remember, Intel was basically given a monopoly position and that's not going to happen here." TI has done well to increase its market share in the general-purpose DSP market by a few percentage points each of the last few years, to the point where it held a 48 percent share of the $4.4 billion market in 1999, according to Forward Concepts. That market is expected to grow to $18 billion by 2004, and represents only a portion of the overall opportunities for DSP, according to analysts.