Texas Instruments Unveils Worlds First Dsp Chip

Texas Instruments India Ltd released the worlds first commercial digital signal processor (DSP) globally here on Thursday. To be named Ankoor, the new processor is all set to revolutionise original equipment manufacturing (OEM) for building tomorrows real-time applications today.

This achievement is particularly significant as it dispels the gloom that Microsofts decision to relocate its software centre from Bangalore to Hyderabad had brought on. With this launch Bangalore has once again showcased its prowess in the global infotech (IT) industry.

The processor has been designed indigenously by the nations first multinational infotech company, Texas Instruments (India) Ltd.

By releasing Ankoor, the $10-billion Texas Instruments, which has 50 per cent market share in DSP solutions, hopes to cash in on an estimated global market of $5 billion likely to grow to $10 billion by year 2000.

Ankoor, the C2700 silicon design project, and the development of software simulators and models was carried out entirely by the Bangalore DSP team at TI, which started operations just over two years ago.

What Windows is to Microsoft, Pentium to Intel, Ankoor is to Texas Instruments, said Srinivasan Rajam, managing director, TI (India).

Congratulating the TI team for successfully designing the processor, TIs vice-president for semiconductor group in US, Michael J Hames, said that the global company expected to rake in billions of dollars from this chip designed in Bangalore.

Rajam said that the C2700 is the first DSP in the world which combines signal processing and control functions in a single chip. This enables OEMs to replace two processors with one, or to upgrade MCUs (microcontrollers) to DSP performance. For the first time, OEMs will be able to completely implement the most demanding real-time applications in a high-level language.

Anybody who uses a mobile phone or e-mail, or accesses data on a PC hard drive needs DSP solutions. Image processing and stabilisation in camcorders, global positioning systems (GPS) and advanced point-of-sale terminals are some of the applications that fuel the inevitable need for increasing performance that can only be attained with DSP solutions.