'We are betting big on convergence'

                                Â
-Doug
Rasor, VP and manager of worldwide strategic marketing, Texas Instruments

What kind of areas are you focusing on at present?

Digital Signal Processing (DSP) for the several decades has been the
company's focus. I spend a lot of time understanding what is the next big
application area for DSP. The analog circuitry that surrounds DSP is both a
great business opportunity as well as a source of challenge for our customers.
So we help them with the analog and the DSP part and try to build a better
relationship with customers at the system level. With large companies, it is
sometimes difficult to be entrepreneurial and react quickly and create new
products.

I try to incubate new ideas inside the company based on
interactions with big companies, universities, start-ups and people who watch
the market. Products like DSL modems and cable modems, MP3 player chips, digital
camera chips and our Open Multimedia Applications Platform (OMAP) wireless
platform were incubated using these ideas.

What technologies is TI betting in the coming years?

We are betting big on convergence between entertainment and communications.
In Asia, and other countries, phones are no longer for just talking. Camera
phones are becoming common and also a lot of new applications like video and
multimedia. We are making investments to take it to higher levels. We are adding
video and software with analog functions, power and battery management for
smaller phones. There is convergence in communications and entertainment in
areas like the IP set-up box and entertainment services using broadband
networks.

Our DaVinci platform is aimed at addressing video and
support communications and the rest of the interfaces. As far as mobile TV goes,
we are investing in tuner chip to receive signals for DVDH. Healthcare is
another area that is using communications and video imaging.

What is the roadmap for your much-touted DaVinci technology?

DaVinci is our chip architecture /platform for imaging and what we need to
do next is to deliver the specific DaVinci devices. You will see that happen
aggressively over the next year. We have already painted a broad target about
the applications-video, IP security cameras, IP set top boxes, camcorders and
wherever there is multi-format digital video.

Right now we don't have any plans for any specific DaVinci
device for medical imaging. But I think that medical systems vendors will look
at DaVinci and think of replacing their multiple DSPs with one DaVinci chip. We
would expect medical applications and others like machines for industrial
control to use similar DaVinci devices. But right now, there are no plans to do
specific chips for medical systems.

What are your plans for the ultra low-cost mobile (ULC) chipset that you
have announced?

We have been planning a lot around ULC chip-sets. There is a lot of buzz
about high-end phones. But if you look at the number of subscribers-1.6 billion
subscribers, the number is small compared to the four-six billion people who can
be reached with cellular —who can make their first phone calls in their lives
on a cell phone.

I think emerging markets are a big opportunity and we will
target those as well. They are not sexy technologies but they will provide us a
lot of value and capabilities. The bottomline is that this market is about cost.
So we have developed a single chip phone-so that all the analog processing,
digital processing and the radio rest on a single device. We are actively
engaged with handset makers and also some of them in India to create those
handsets. The first phones will be out in 2006. They are being tested now.

With other companies like Motorola and Infineon also announcing their
plans for the ultra low cost mobile market, isn't the field becoming highly
competitive even before the phones are out?

This is a big market and no one company can cover the whole market. To be
successful, certain factors are necessary. One factor is to integrate the
technology with a single chip; to my knowledge, a lot of people have announced
their intentions to do it, but are not there yet. The acid test is when the
phones come out.

Secondly, it is important to have no margin for error. You
cannot afford to have the die size too large or a package too expensive. We
think that the ability to own your own fabrication facility without having to
depend on other foundries is important.

We think we are well positioned since we are experienced
and have the technology in place to build chips in TI factories.

With more and more functionalities getting added on smart phones, when do
you think these phones could match the processing power of PCs?

We like to admire companies like Intel who we compete against. But they have
been on the MHz/GHz treadmill forever. Now you see them retrench and lower their
clock speeds and talk about multiple cores. If you look at our OMAP platform, we
have been shipping multiple cores for about five years. We focus more on system
performance, which includes battery life and applications and not just how fast
they run. I think there will be an overlap of portable computer and smart phones
in areas of performance and capability. In a couple of years, it is going to be
very difficult to tell the difference between the two.

For TI, India has been more a development base than a market. But since
the last few years, this is changing. How does the company view this evolution?

Yes, TI has been in India for 20 years. We have done valuable development
out of here. Because of the growth of the consumer economy in India, many of our
customers are coming here. We are now helping them in development and support.
Gradually, there are indigenous companies like Ittiam and Sasken, which are
investing in wireless and RFID. This will be an on-going process and something
we are committed to and will invest in.

My personal observation is that in India you don't have
people who have learnt “from-the-school-of-hard-knocks” experience unlike US
Silicon Valley. That will come eventually.

Priya Padmanabhan  

mail@dqindia.com