HOUSTON (October 30, 2000) - Demonstrating unprecedented support across an extensive customer base, Texas Instruments Inc today announced that its industry-leading platform of high-performance TMS320C6000 digital signal processors (DSPs) has surpassed $3 billion in projected lifetime net revenue from design-ins. (Note: Design-in lifetime net revenue (LNR) is projected over the next 3-5 years. Design-ins reflect a customer's indication of choice to design a TI device or devices into the customer's product, but do not necessarily represent a formal customer commitment to purchase product.) The milestone comes less than four years after the introduction of TI's first-generation TMS320C6000 DSP platform and underscores the confidence of multi-media and broadband customers whose applications require the real-time high performance that only TI DSPs provide. See www.ti.com/.

"The programmable C6000 DSP core technology at the heart of TI's ADSL chipset solutions, offer the IBM NetVista family future-proof broadband technology," said Richard Stomp, IBM vice president of global telecommunications industry. "Providing consumers with the best technology now and the ability to upgrade with an easy software download to enable higher-speeds and new services in the future is a major reason why we chose TI's programmable DSP-based ADSL solutions."

Because TI, the world leader in DSP and analog, anticipated the needs of leading companies such as Panasonic, Compaq, IBM, Ericsson, and Marconi Medical, C6000 DSPs have become the de-facto standard in third generation (3G) wireless infrastructure, broadband communications and imaging applications. Makers of medical imaging equipment, network cameras, digital recorders, multi-media gateway, machine vision and optical networking equipment, broadband communications equipment, and a host of other cutting-edge applications have come to rely on TI's C6000 DSPs coupled with its industry-leading software and analog products.

"This level of market acceptance is unheard of for devices of this kind," said Mike Hames, TI vice president and worldwide DSP manager. "We are shipping millions of C6000 DSP devices into a variety of applications. It clearly shows that our world-leading combination of high performance and C programmability provides the right solution for today's multi-media and broadband needs." Hames also added that more than 10,000 developers and design engineers around the world have gained solid experience with C6000 DSPs. They know that TI's unmatched high-level language efficiency and profile-based compilation technology provide enormous flexibility and help them quickly turn their ideas into products. TI's Code Composer Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which includes the industry's most advanced C compiler, slashes simulation, test and debugging time and helps customers speed their innovations from the workbench to store shelves. Additional time-to-market savings is provided by numerous third party offerings for C6000 DSPs, which are compliant with TI's eXpressDSP real-time software technology and provide an array of system level solutions available today.

For designers and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), the depth and breadth of the C6000 DSP platform, which contains nine code-compatible, floating-point and fixed-point devices shipping today at clock rates up to 300 MHz, provides a foundation upon which to develop product lines into the future. OEMs can build brands around C6000 DSPs with complete confidence that they can continue to offer

high-performance, feature-rich and technologically advanced products to their customers.

"Altigen is committed to providing a scalable, feature-rich phone system that enables our customers to compete effectively, along with the flexibility to easily add more advanced capabilities as their needs change," said Joseph Chiu, Altigen vice president of platform engineering. "The Altiserv phone system requires both the high-performance and scalable capabilities that only TI's C6000 DSP platform offers today. Based on TI's proven, code-compatible roadmap, we know that TI will continue to provide the highest-performing DSPs for many years to come."

TI's C6000 product roadmap assures designers that they will not be left behind as competition continues to heat up. Devices currently available let them reach today's market with the innovations that consumers demand. Additionally, TMS320C64x DSP devices, the newest members of the C6000 platform, will offer designers a code-compatible roadmap to the fastest DSP ever developed with scalable performance to over 1.1 GHz.

No matter how you slice it or dice it, $3 billion isn't bad for a single product line, especially over just a couple of years. Heck, most companies don't generate that amount of revenue over their entire product lines in their entire existence. Sure, some of TI's competitors might think they've got some numbers in the DSP market to crow about, but I think they'd be hard pressed to match this level.

I was interested in getting a couple extra facts and figures, so I spent a few minutes talking with Pradeep Bardia, Product Marketing Manager for the 64X family. He first points out that there are nine code-compatible members of the family presently available. Six are fixed-point devices (TMS320C6201, -02, -3, -4, -5 and -11), while three are floating-point devices (TMS320C6701, -11 and -12). One out of each group, the -11, features a dual-level cache architecture at the $25 level.

The least expensive of the bunch at roughly $10 is the C6712, while at the other end of the price range at an OEM price between $120 and $150 you'll find the C6203, which packs 7M bits of on-chip memory and is suited for applications such as base stations and other memory-intensive jobs.

The first devices shipped in February 1997, and since then, as the press release states, the firm has either sold or booked orders for $3 billion worth of chips. Bardia elaborates that this is the shortest ramp TI has seen for any platform to be accepted by the marketplace. He says that it typically takes from four to eight years to get devices so broadly accepted, in this case in the hands of 10,000 programmers.

I knew that asking which part was the most successful would be like asking which one of his kids he loves most, and Bardia not surprisingly sidestepped the question nicely by stating that you had to stipulate the application. For 3G wireless, a 250- or 300-MHz part like the 6203 is extremely popular, whereas for broadband and wireless tasks such as ADSL and DSL modems the 6201 and 6202 are quite popular. He adds that the 6211 and 6711 have recently become asked for in consumer applications due to their low cost.