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Product category: Analogue and Mixed Signal ICs
News Release from: Texas Instruments (April 2001-March 2006)
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 17 May 2005

TI clocks up three-quarter century

Among many major milestones in the history of Texas Instruments, the company passed another one on 16th May 2005 by marking its 75th anniversary

Among many major milestones in the history of Texas Instruments (TI), the company passed another one on 16th May 2005 by marking its 75th anniversary. Yet even as the company paused to commemorate its past, the people of TI continue to deliver technology innovations that have a profound and positive effect on people around the world.

'A common characteristic among the people of Texas Instruments is an impatient eagerness to buck the odds and do something different', said TI Chairman Tom Engibous.

'TI'ers just don't seem to know what cannot be done'.

'So, this company has consistently achieved what others thought was impossible'.

Revolutionary developments from TI include the use of a new technology to explore for oil worldwide during the Great Depression, the world's first commercial silicon transistors in 1952 and the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958.

More recently, TI has become the acknowledged leader in real-time signal processing, which is the primary enabling technology behind communications and electronics products such as cellphones, HDTVs, portable media players, high-speed networking, digital cameras and other advances in digital technology.

TI is the world's leading supplier of both DSP and analogue semiconductors, the principal technologies for real-time signal processing.

More than half of all cellphones shipped worldwide rely on TI's wireless solutions.

The company is also the world's top supplier for DSL modems, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions and mobile wireless LAN products.

Recent innovations include the following.

TI announced the world's first single-chip cellphone in early 2005.

This breakthrough product, which is already making calls in customer laboratories, will help make basic cellphones so affordable that hundreds of millions of people around the world could experience telecommunications for the first time in their lives.

The company's OMAP 2 processors, unveiled in 2004, will bring a vast array of multimedia features to advanced cellphones, including DVD-quality video, Hi-Fi audio, broadcast digital TV, three-dimensional gaming and more.

TI began shipping the world's first 1GHz DSP in 2004.

This product can process billions of operations per second.

It is so fast that medical researchers are using it to develop systems that will allow blind people to see.

Other developers are using it to create vehicles that safely navigate and drive themselves with no human intervention.

The company's DLP Cinema technology for theatres can recreate 35 trillion different colours with extreme clarity, thus providing a truly immersive experience for movie-goers.

Digital Light Processing technology can also be experienced in 75 models of rear projection HDTVs.

'While our core business has been real-time signal processing with digital signal processors, or DSPs, and analogue semiconductors, we're still actively innovating in the calculator market and other areas as well', said TI President and CEO Rich Templeton.

'TI's graphing calculators have become an educational rite-of-passage for students', Templeton said.

'Also, we're the world's largest integrated manufacturer of radio frequency identification (RFID) transponders and reader systems, which are used in an ever-increasing range of applications from inventory tracking and authentication to temperature sensing and condition monitoring'.

From its roots in 1930 as a pioneer in developing signal processing technology to search for hidden reservoirs of oil, TI has consistently been a company of firsts.

TI was the first company to commercialise silicon transistors, a breakthrough that accelerated the industry's shift from vacuum tubes to solid state devices.

In 1958, TI's Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit, which opened the door for the exploration of space and ultimately launched the modern electronics industry as it is known today.

Reaching into the consumer market, TI transformed maths and science education by inventing the handheld electronic calculator in 1967.

In 1978, TI took another revolutionary step with the introduction of the first single-chip speech synthesiser, enabling the first product (Speak and Spell) incorporating low-cost speech synthesis technology.

Realising the need to provide close support to its customers, TI was the first semiconductor company to think and operate globally by setting up operations in the UK in 1956.

TI was the first foreign semiconductor company to operate in Japan and was the first foreign technology company in India.

TI now has manufacturing, design or sales operations in 25 different nations.

As amazing as the past has been, the people of TI are reaching for an even more incredible future.

'TI's objective is to take the fantastic visions of technology's potential, and go beyond the limits', Engibous said.

'We're not just making dreams possible'.

'We're making them practical'.

'We've been doing that for 75 years, and we have no intention of stopping now'.

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