Texas Instruments Inc is putting $100m into a venture capital fund to boost digital signal processing (DSP), the key technology behind digitization of electronic equipment. The money is designed to back companies developing the next wave of DSP applications, particularly start-up companies. Applications that will be common ten years from now haven’t even been thought of today. TI wants to find these pockets of genius, provide seed money and help make their inventions become reality, said Tom Engibous, president and chief executive of TI. Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, a leading market research company, said; DSP is the glue of the three converging industries – computers, consumer and communications. We believe the demand for DSPs will explode because the demand is coming from different end markets. TI already has partnerships with universities and research centers around the world to further DSP developments and this month opened a $150m research and development center in Dallas, Texas as its own DSP center.
