IBM Corp’s Microelectronics Division expanded its Blue Logic custom ASIC chip business yesterday, and at the same time pitched into the increasingly competitive world of digital signal processors with a head-on challenge to Texas Instruments Inc. Along with two dozen new chip cores added to its Blue Logic library, IBM included a new core providing full compatibility with TI’s TMS320C54X DSP, as used in millions of cell phones and other communications devices. The move piles further pressure onto DSP market leader TI, which last week saw Motorola Inc and Lucent Technologies Inc combine to develop core-based DSP chips (CI No 3,423). IBM says the core will provide the first available alternative to the TI part. Chip analyst, Forward Concepts, valued the global market for DSPs at $3.13bn in 1997, and estimates that the figures will be $14bn by 2002. TI’s shares had tumbled 6.49% on the news by the end of the day. IBM now has over 60 cores in its Blue Logic library, segmented into products aimed at consumer, data processing, consumer and multisegment applications, and including cores based on the PowerPC, Advanced RISC Machines Ltd ARM chip and Sun Microsystems Inc’s picoJava processor (CI No 3,360). The package includes the Blue Logic design methodology and IBM’s on-chip bus architecture. The $100m investment in ASICs is part of the divisions move away from memory chips, and also includes plans to expand facilities for making masks for circuit printing, recruiting more design engineers and further support for chip design software. In February, IBM boosted the division up with its $180m acquisition of wireless semiconductor company Commquest Technologies Inc (CI No 3,346), and estimates have it that ASICs now make up some 60% of IBM Microelectronics revenues, which topped $7bn in 1997.
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