Texas Instruments Celebrates Five Years of Wireless Single-Chip Innovation
In five years, Texas Instruments Incorporated has launched more than a dozen wireless single-chip solutions, ranging from the world’s first single-chip cell phone modem to multi-radio connectivity devices, and continues to shape and define the rapidly changing wireless landscape. Increasingly, handset manufacturers require highly integrated, scalable solutions that address a multitude of consumer requirements around the globe. TI initially addressed this need five years ago with another industry first – a single-chip Bluetooth solution (the BRF6100) based on the company’s innovative DRP technology, delivering a small and affordable solution that accelerated penetration of Bluetooth in wireless phones.
The BRF6100 was the first device based on TI’s revolutionary DRP single-chip technology, a maximum digital process that is scalable to support a variety of air interfaces today and tomorrow. DRP technology has been integral in delivering on TI’s promise of supporting its customers with solutions that improve cost, size and power. Today, TI’s broad portfolio of DRP technology-based single-chip solutions ranges from cellular to connectivity technologies, including GSM, GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi. TI expects to have shipped more than 200 million units of DRP technology-based chips by the end of 2007, demonstrating the fast ramp and high demand for TI’s single-chip technology.
“When TI first announced plans for the wireless single-chip market five years ago, we knew it would accelerate wireless technology, especially in high-growth economies, and that has certainly happened,” said Greg Delagi, senior vice president of TI’s Wireless Terminals Business Unit. “Single-chip solutions are truly growing up, and we’re going well beyond simply providing a single function device to now providing everything needed for an affordable, feature-rich phone on just one piece of silicon.”
Building on the company’s legacy of more than 75 years of innovation, TI’s LoCosto™ single-chip cell phone platform revolutionized the wireless industry and truly defined the global entry-level handset market when it was introduced in 2004. The LoCosto solution goes beyond delivering just basic, black and white, voice-only phones – it also supports affordable multimedia features that consumers around the globe demand in their mobile phones, including color displays, cameras and FM radio.
In addition to its LoCosto solutions, TI offers the BlueLink Bluetooth platform, WiLink Wi-Fi solutions and NaviLink GPS solutions as part of its single-chip connectivity portfolio. With these technologies, TI continues to push the envelope with multi-radio integration technology to enable handset manufacturers to quickly and seamlessly integrate these three functions into feature-rich mainstream handsets.