Texas Instruments Develops Modem Chip
By S. SRINIVASAN
BANGALORE, India (AP) — U.S. semiconductor maker Texas Instruments (TXN) said Friday its research center in the southern Indian city of Bangalore has developed a single combined chip for high-speed modems – an improvement over current modems which require several chips.
Vivek Pawar, general manager of TI’s broadband silicon technology center, said the new design is the world’s first single-chip solution for asymmetric digital subscriber line modems.
ADSL is a variation of digital subscriber line technology, which enables broadband Internet connections over ordinary telephone lines.
“The nearest competition is a three-chip solution,” Pawar said.
Pawar said there are single chips available for modems working on other technologies, but TI’s new chip is the only one for ADSL technology.
The maximum speed supported by the new chip is 20 megabits per second, enough to download seven floppy disks’ worth of files in about four seconds.
The new chip can reduce manufacturing costs for modem makers by a fourth, Pawar said. It will also help reduce the size of modems by cutting down on the number of components.
A team of 70 engineers at the Bangalore center developed the chip, which is expected to hit the global market in late 2003.
TI’s Bangalore center has already developed an advanced digital signal processor, an audio processor and a media chip.
In 1985, Dallas-based TI became the first foreign company to set up a software center in Bangalore when it opened a computer-aided design center for semiconductors.
This helped launch the booming software industry in the city, which now contributes a fourth of India’s US$10 billion in annual software exports.
Intel, Silicon Laboratories and IBM are other companies that design chips in Bangalore.
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