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Technology Stocks : Texas Instruments - Good buy now or should we wait? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gdichaz who wrote (3495)	4/20/1998 3:54:00 PM
From: pat mudge	Respond to of 6180

Or is it totally in GSM and TDMA - which are huge areas but growing more slowly? I'm not an engineer, so could be wrong, but as I see it, these modulation codes aren't the key issue with TXN and cellular phones. There are DSPs in the handsets and DSPs in the base stations. The same annual report mentioned wireless as the fastest growing segment of the DSP market and I know for a fact TXN's involved as is SSPIF, one of my primary investments. Later -- Pat

To: gdichaz who wrote (3495)	4/20/1998 4:33:00 PM
From: pat mudge	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6180

Chaz -- Okay, I went to the source --- TI --- and was told their DSPs can be programmed for either CDMA or TDMA. Doesn't make a bit of difference. I also called Qualcomm and they don't give out supplier information. Later -- Pat

To: gdichaz who wrote (3495)	4/20/1998 7:06:00 PM
From: Jon Huang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6180

Hi All, I recently had job interviews with TI and Qualcomm, so maybe I could shed some light on the subject. DSPs are being used in CDMA phones, although they are used slightly differently than in TDMA phones. Because CDMA modulation requires a much higher sampling rate than TDMA, today's low power DSPs are generally not fast enough for the physical layer communications tasks. In CDMA phones, DSPs are used for voice-band processing (speech compression primarily), and ASICS are used for most of the other tasks. In TDMA phones, most of the number crunching are processed by the DSPs, including voice-band processing, equalization, modulation, etc. My feeling is that DSPs are more desirable than ASICS because they are much easier, quicker (thus cheaper) to develop, and update. As DSPs become faster in the future, we might see a gradual shift of CDMA modulation into DSPs. Qualcomm has an in-house DSP known as the QDSP. Now they are working on "QDSP II". From talking to their engineers, it seems to me that they are using their own DSPs because it is cheaper and it has some "custome" instructions for that are useful for their own product. I tend to believe the cost is more of an issue because the industry consensus is that the TI c54x has a one of the best instruction sets for wireless applications. Just thought I share a few more comments about TI as result of my interview. I thought the engineers I talked to are very talented. I was impressed with TI's offer, it is even higher than my offers from the Silicon Valley. Because TI shifted out of other businesses, they are doing the best they can to recruit quality engineering talents. The morale in TI is very good. People who have worked there for years are more excited about the company today than ever. JH