Semiconductor giant Texas Instruments Inc has taken advantage of the publicity surrounding Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line technology, one of the only ways for enabling high speed internet access through existing phone lines, to announce its ADSL chipset. ADSL has recently hit the headlines when a group of companies, including the five baby Bells, GTE Corp, Sprint Corp, Microsoft Corp, Intel Corp and Compaq Computer Corp jointly announced an initiative to push for the rapid standardization and implementation of ADSL, under the name Universal ADSL. The companies should give the move towards ADSL a kick start, because ADSL technology has been around for nearly four years now, without a single US or European telephone operator launching a full commercial service. Texas Instruments has already prepared the ground for a big push into ADSL with the $395m cash acquisition of ADSL pioneer Amati Communications Corp in November (CI No 3,260), and it has already laid down the groundwork with 3Com Corp for the development of a ADSL modem (CI No 3,160). TI is also extolling the virtues of its software programmable DSPs, claiming that it will be able to change between the various ADSL standards with a software upgrade. TI is hoping a significant market is going to open up for its flagship DSP business, that sells 45% of the world’s DSPs. TI will also be manufacturing a chipset for telecoms network switches, and reckons again that its DSPs have a critical advantage of the competition as two ADSL calls can be processed on one DSP, reducing the price significantly. TI will be sampling the chipsets in the first quarter, which uses its TMS320C6x Digital Signal Processing chips, and other TI components such as analog signal converters, and will go into full production in the second quarter.
