Monday, December 8, 2008
Conclusion
We can know see how important Texas Instruments has been in the technology world and in our lives as well. Texas Instruments will continue to implement new and improved technologies across a wide range of businesses. The semiconductor business, which is Texas Instrument's main revenue generator will continue to be used and improved for commercial and personal products. Texas Instruments innovative manufacturing process for it's semiconductor business, that involves the use of external foundries, is one that will continue to grow the usage of Texas Instrument's semiconductors. The semiconductors that Texas Instruments produces can be found in a range of products from cell phones to digital sound processors. Texas Instruments is also seeking to improve and generate more revenue from its DLP technology for televisions, that when compared to LCD or Plasma, delivers a more crisp and color accurate picture. Texas Instruments is also becoming more involved in classroom education technology. Texas Instruments has always had a nice and secure role in the classroom with the creation of the calculator and nowadays with the creation of complex calculators that have the ability to graph within them. Texas Instruments has been around for over 50 years and has done so by creating superior effecient technology products that not only businesses, and militaries rely on, but also teachers, parents, and students as well.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Texas Instrument IT Strategy
Texas Instruments IT strategy is one that incorporates innovation in not only product design, but more importantly manufacturing. Tl's major contribution to technology is the semiconductor. They are currently the third largest maker and supplier of semiconductors in the world. Texas Instruments is also the number one maker and supplier for digital sound processors (DSP) in the world. TI is also the leader in DLP technology, which consists of micro-mirror components, a technology used in video projectors and televisions as well as movie theatres or cinemas that delivers high def quality. TI's main revenue producing technology is t
he semiconductor industry. From these semiconductors TI is able to allow manufacturers to create several different products. One popular product that is a result of a TI semiconductor is the cellular phone. Some other products include calculators, RFID systems, digital consumer devices, broadband communication systems and other PC peripherals.
The manufacturing and development strategy at TI is somewhat a complex system, however it is because of this complex system or strategy that is what makes TI strong today and will make TI even more prevalent in the future. In January 2007, TI announced a shift in its internal technology development to take advantage of its foundry partners’ R&D capabilities. With foundries now supplying more than half of TI’s digital CMOS capacity during the peak periods of the demand cycle, the regular exchange of process technology information at the 130-nm, 90-nm and 65-nm nodes made it clear that there was no longer a significant gap between the foundries’ development and our own. Now the processes that the foundries develop for TI will be the starting point for TI’s own internal production.
As a result, starting at the 32-nm node TI will collaborate closely with the foundries to develop processes that specifically address our products’ requirements and our customers’ needs. The resulting digital CMOS development wafers will run in the foundries’ clean rooms instead of our own. Later, when the process is ready to transition to production, wafers will be produced both in TI’s factories and at the foundries. This flexible model for silicon technology development allows TI significant opportunity to tailor the process technology to the specific needs of our customers. TI also remains
focused on being first in its markets to ramp products to volume production at each node. As one of our foundry partners’ largest customers, TI will receive unique support in addressing our products’ requirements and our customers’ needs. Just as we have always done when transferring products to our foundry partners, we will specify a Process Development Kit (PDK) that outlines in detail the specifications the process must meet or exceed to support our design needs. TI will leverage the digital CMOS technologies developed by our foundry partners to support our highly differentiated design libraries. TI will continue to differentiate its digital CMOS designs in many ways, including, Low-power design, High-density embedded SRAM, Analog and RF integration, Software Development tools, and Signal processing cores.
Texas Instrument is always dedicated to its research and development of products with about $2.2 billion forecast to be spent in 2007 on research and development, TI continues to invest significantly in innovation. These investments touch areas where TI sees opportunity to differentiate for its customers, including intellectual property (IP) at the circuit, system and software level. Advances in packaging and analog process technology are regularly contributing to Tl's competitive position. Here are some of the areas that TI will focus its research and development on: Low Power Management Reducing system power consumption is no longer only a matter of longer battery life or reducing heat dissipation, it's a global environmental concern. TI has committed teams working solely on reducing power consumption at both the chip and system level. SmartReflex™ is the company’s holistic approach combining a number of proprietary TI technologies to dramatically reduce both static and dynamic power throughout an application.
Digital RF technologies, with an eye toward putting mobile communications technology into the hands of more people, including people in third-world countries who may have never made a phone call, TI is leading the way in lowering costs by integrating large portions of wireless systems onto single-chip, high-volume digital CMOS technology. TI’s DRP™ architecture uses sampled data processing techniques to build robust transceivers that require no off-chip intermediate filtering stages or more costly SiGe or BiCMOS RF technologies, dramatically reducing total system cost, bill of materials and power consumption. Also, TI has consistently led the industry in its SRAM memory technology, specifically the size of its memory cell. As applications demand increasing amounts of extremely fast memory on-chip, the amount of chip area dedicated to memory has also grown, increasing manufacturing costs to produce the device. TI's use of 193-nm immersion tools has resulted in the development of what TI believes to be the smallest 45-nm SRAM memory cells in the industry, occupying only 0.24 square microns. That’s up to 30 percent smaller than other 45-nm memory cells devices announced to date.
TI’s Analog Technology: Analog chips connect digital signal processors (DSPs) and other types of logic to the outside world, changing real-world signals such as light and sound into binary pulses and back again. Many analog functions are not optimized for high-speed digital logic integration. In those cases, TI analog product development teams focus on analog-only integration, with optimized components for precision, speed and power. Different TI processes are devoted to the various needs of signal conditioning, data conversion and power supply in customers’ systems.
he semiconductor industry. From these semiconductors TI is able to allow manufacturers to create several different products. One popular product that is a result of a TI semiconductor is the cellular phone. Some other products include calculators, RFID systems, digital consumer devices, broadband communication systems and other PC peripherals.The manufacturing and development strategy at TI is somewhat a complex system, however it is because of this complex system or strategy that is what makes TI strong today and will make TI even more prevalent in the future. In January 2007, TI announced a shift in its internal technology development to take advantage of its foundry partners’ R&D capabilities. With foundries now supplying more than half of TI’s digital CMOS capacity during the peak periods of the demand cycle, the regular exchange of process technology information at the 130-nm, 90-nm and 65-nm nodes made it clear that there was no longer a significant gap between the foundries’ development and our own. Now the processes that the foundries develop for TI will be the starting point for TI’s own internal production.
As a result, starting at the 32-nm node TI will collaborate closely with the foundries to develop processes that specifically address our products’ requirements and our customers’ needs. The resulting digital CMOS development wafers will run in the foundries’ clean rooms instead of our own. Later, when the process is ready to transition to production, wafers will be produced both in TI’s factories and at the foundries. This flexible model for silicon technology development allows TI significant opportunity to tailor the process technology to the specific needs of our customers. TI also remains
focused on being first in its markets to ramp products to volume production at each node. As one of our foundry partners’ largest customers, TI will receive unique support in addressing our products’ requirements and our customers’ needs. Just as we have always done when transferring products to our foundry partners, we will specify a Process Development Kit (PDK) that outlines in detail the specifications the process must meet or exceed to support our design needs. TI will leverage the digital CMOS technologies developed by our foundry partners to support our highly differentiated design libraries. TI will continue to differentiate its digital CMOS designs in many ways, including, Low-power design, High-density embedded SRAM, Analog and RF integration, Software Development tools, and Signal processing cores.
Texas Instrument is always dedicated to its research and development of products with about $2.2 billion forecast to be spent in 2007 on research and development, TI continues to invest significantly in innovation. These investments touch areas where TI sees opportunity to differentiate for its customers, including intellectual property (IP) at the circuit, system and software level. Advances in packaging and analog process technology are regularly contributing to Tl's competitive position. Here are some of the areas that TI will focus its research and development on: Low Power Management Reducing system power consumption is no longer only a matter of longer battery life or reducing heat dissipation, it's a global environmental concern. TI has committed teams working solely on reducing power consumption at both the chip and system level. SmartReflex™ is the company’s holistic approach combining a number of proprietary TI technologies to dramatically reduce both static and dynamic power throughout an application.
Digital RF technologies, with an eye toward putting mobile communications technology into the hands of more people, including people in third-world countries who may have never made a phone call, TI is leading the way in lowering costs by integrating large portions of wireless systems onto single-chip, high-volume digital CMOS technology. TI’s DRP™ architecture uses sampled data processing techniques to build robust transceivers that require no off-chip intermediate filtering stages or more costly SiGe or BiCMOS RF technologies, dramatically reducing total system cost, bill of materials and power consumption. Also, TI has consistently led the industry in its SRAM memory technology, specifically the size of its memory cell. As applications demand increasing amounts of extremely fast memory on-chip, the amount of chip area dedicated to memory has also grown, increasing manufacturing costs to produce the device. TI's use of 193-nm immersion tools has resulted in the development of what TI believes to be the smallest 45-nm SRAM memory cells in the industry, occupying only 0.24 square microns. That’s up to 30 percent smaller than other 45-nm memory cells devices announced to date.
TI’s Analog Technology: Analog chips connect digital signal processors (DSPs) and other types of logic to the outside world, changing real-world signals such as light and sound into binary pulses and back again. Many analog functions are not optimized for high-speed digital logic integration. In those cases, TI analog product development teams focus on analog-only integration, with optimized components for precision, speed and power. Different TI processes are devoted to the various needs of signal conditioning, data conversion and power supply in customers’ systems.
Business Strategy of Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments is an 80 year old multi-billion, multi-national company with over 50,000 employees in 26 countries. Texas Instruments had major product lines in such diverse areas such as geophysical oil exploration, consumer products such as calculators and computers, software point-of-sale systems, digital military radar and missile systems and, of course semiconductor products.
However within the past 10 years there has been a major change in strategic direction. The corporation divested itself of ancillary product lines and focused on their core competency which was semiconductors and Digital Signal Processing solutions.
Business Strategy- Globally
The Global Standards Arena
Texas Instruments Business Strategy
Monday, October 6, 2008
History of Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments has been around since 1951. The company was founded by Cecil Green, Erik Jonsson, Eugene McDermott, and Patrick Haggerty. These gentlemen were employees at GSI (Geophysical Services Inc) who bought the company they worked for in 1941. They then hired Patrick Haggerty to run their Labor & Manufacturing sector of the company. The L&M division grew rapidly with defense contracts, so GSI was reorganized and then was named Texas Instruments. TI was very active with the military technology. Some of the products made for the military pre-1950 were infrared, radar, and laser guides for missiles. During the 1980’s, TI shifted its focus into the business market with a innovative six sigma quality control method. In 1952, TI bought a patent license from AT&T to produce germanium transistors. In less than a year TI was able to mass produce and sell the transistors which was quite an achievement for that time era.
Two years later TI produced the first commercial silicon transistor. This allowed TI to create the first transistor radio which was carried a high demand for a consumer product. In 1958, Jack Kilby an employee at TI invented the first integrated circuit. In 2000, Kilby won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his remarkable invention. TI also invented the first handheld calculator in 1967 and the single chip microcomputer in 1971. TI is responsible for help creating a whole new industry with the invention of the microprocessor. In 1978, TI had made speech synthesizing microchip. The major outcomes of this are the voice in the movie E.T. and the handheld children’s game Speak & Spell. In 1981, TI entered the home computer market with the TI 99/4 which was a main competitor to the Apple II. TI later then removed itself from the home computer market, but did and does still continue to have a role in the microprocessor industry. TI then went on to focus its business in the semiconductor industry which accounts for 96% of total revenues as of 2006. These products are used in products ranging from cell phones to digital cameras to sound processors. TI’s latest innovation is its DLP (Digital Light Processor) technology used for producing video for televisions and movie theaters. It has said to have more clarity than LCD’s and plasma technology.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)