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

To: John Chen who wrote (3595)	5/18/1998 2:18:00 PM
From: pat mudge	Respond to of 6180

,re:"any thought on the next few weeks". Buy more if it dips. I'm watching. A couple articles in today's LATimes point to more business for TI: latimes.com Stanford out to Shrink the Digital Camera: <<< . . . .At the heart of the project is a radical approach to digital imaging that some had thought was impossible. ÿÿÿÿÿThe current generation of digital cameras, ranging from space probes to camcorders, use charged coupled devices--or CCDs--to collect light and send it on to a series of processors that convert the light energy to digital signals, which can then be processed and compressed into images. ÿÿÿÿÿ"Lots and lots of processes happen," El Gamal said, "so you end up with many chips, which means high cost and high power, which is not good for cameras and portables." ÿÿÿÿÿFor several years, a number of companies have been developing standard computer chips that could ultimately replace CCDs. These chips capture the signal and digitize it on the same chip. ÿÿÿÿÿAbout five years ago, El Gamal and a graduate student, Boyd Fowler, took a hard look at that research. ÿÿÿÿÿ"We said, 'Wait a minute. If you are going to integrate processing and capture on the same chip, you should really rethink the whole thing,' " El Gamal said. ÿÿÿÿÿ"Instead of having a block on a chip that does the sensing, and the output from that block goes to another block on the chip that does analog conversion [to digital], and then it goes to another block for signal processing . . . instead of that, can you integrate these things more deeply." ÿÿÿÿÿThey wanted to know, for example, if it might be possible to digitize the signal on the pixel level. Pixels are tiny parts of an image--packets of light, like grains of silver in photographic emulsions--that make up the picture. ÿIf individual pixels could be digitized at the time of their capture, El Gamal reasoned, a major step in the process would be eliminated, along with a lot of the background noise that degrades the electronic image. ÿÿÿÿÿ"At first it seemed like a crazy idea because ADC (analog-to-digital conversion) chips are very complex and require a large number of transistors," El Gamal said. ÿÿÿÿÿBut the researchers persisted, and Stanford now has four patents covering pixel-level digitizing. ÿÿÿÿÿFive chips have been produced in the Stanford lab, and El Gamal said they prove that the concept has tremendous advantages over CCD technology. ÿÿÿÿÿIt is possible, for example, to program the camera on a pixel-by-pixel basis. That greatly increases its dynamic range, or its ability to capture features in bright sunlight and dark shade in the same image. ÿÿÿÿÿWith film, by contrast, the entire roll is the same "speed," so every photo on the roll has the same light sensitivity. The Stanford camera will be able to measure the light from every area of the photograph, and adjust sensitivity to the specific conditions, thus avoiding washing out brightly lighted areas and losing detail in the shadows. ÿÿÿÿÿEl Gamal is a little coy about the results so far because he is waiting to publish in a professional journal. But he insists the "dynamic range is going to be pretty incredible." ÿÿÿÿÿCurrently, however, the lab does not have the kind of equipment it needs to reach the next plateau. The funding from corporate sponsors will be used for better optics, for example, which should enhance the resolution of the images considerably. . . .>>>> The next article is an interview with 3Com's Benhamou, with strong comments re: need for bandwidth: latimes.com >>> . . .ÿA: At 3Com, when we talk about deploying converged networks, the very first thing we focus on achieving is 99.99% reliability, which means that in the course of a year a network can be down for only a few hours. We haven't achieved that yet. ÿÿÿÿÿWe have to figure out ways to simplify [network] administration. ÿÿÿÿÿQ: How do you achieve that? ÿÿÿÿÿA: One way to achieve dramatic simplification is to increase bandwidth everywhere. If you operate any kind of equipment in the red zone long enough, you're going to have failures. Things become exponentially more complicated when you operate networks at close to 100% capability. If you throw bandwidth at the problem--which is something you can do in a non-tariffed environment--you dramatically simplify and lower the cost of operation and increase reliability. . . . >>>