TI eyes video markets with all-in-one chip

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Texas Instruments is using the strategy that made it the world's biggest mobile phone circuit supplier to try to dominate the faster growing video market, the company said on Thursday.

The Dallas-based company introduced a new single chip platform -- called DaVinci -- which combines digital signal and general-purpose processing chips with all the software, design tools and accelerators needed to create the next generation of digital video products.

It's all the basic technology needed to make the latest televisions or video equipment, but in a single chip.

TI is building a single chip "platform" out of components and software that had required five-to-eight specialised chips to perform the same functions, the company said at news conferences in New York and San Francisco.

Other chip makers are pursuing platform strategies of their own. Centrino chips are an example of how Intel has bundled short-range wireless chips and software into a platform that now dominates the market for wireless laptops.

Using this strategy over the past decade to shrink multiple components onto a single chip, TI's OMAP wireless platform has become the brains for 50 percent of the world's mobile phones. TI now hopes to define the standard for video chips.

"We are now going to do the same thing in video that OMAP had done for us in wireless handsets," Greg Delagi, the TI vice president and general manager of the company's non-wireless DSP systems business, said of DaVinci in a phone interview.

For example, one DaVinci-based TV digital set-top box will allow consumers to play and/or record movies while simultaneously video conferencing with friends. Alternately, DaVinci can be used in a video security system to identify a visitor at a door, and allow the user unlock and open it via their TV remote.


Fast growth

According to market researcher Forward Concepts, the US$6 billion DSP market is growing at a rate of 30 percent to 40 percent a year, with volumes led by mobile phone applications. "Video DSPs are growing faster than that," Delagi said.

DaVinci is designed to compete with video chips from Equator, a Pixelworks Inc unit, the TriMedia business of Philips and the Black Fin video system of perennial TI rival Analog Devices Inc, among others, he said.

Texas Instruments is looking to build on their existing strength in digital projectors, cameras and video surveillance equipment to expand into a range of consumer and industrial markets. PC chip maker Intel is eyeing the same market with its recently introduced ViiV chip, designed for use in home entertainment computers and associated consumer electronics.

"TI has their foothold in lots of these markets already," IDC analyst IdaRose Sylvester said after the news conference. "It is looking to take the same basic technology and pitch it to a bunch of very different customers," she said.

In addition to the core semiconductor technology built by TI, the company has taken two years developing the software used to support the major types of video compression, digital rights management and other features that products such as television, videoconferencing, video surveillance require.

Instead of having to tailor its chips to each customer, TI is piling features onto a single chip, allowing customers to select from pre-existing functions as they use DaVinci-based chips to create new products.

The chip will be available in sample amounts between now and the end of the year for electronics makers to begin building it into their video products, Delagi said.

Separately, TI said it expected third-quarter profit and revenue at or above Wall Street's current range of forecasts.

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