TI Marks Five Years of Single-Chip Innovation

Five years ago, Texas Instruments (TI) created a single-chip Bluetooth solution that addressed handset manufacturers' needs for highly integrated, scalable solutions. Since then, the company has launched more than a dozen wireless single-chip solutions, ranging from the world's first single-chip cell phone modem to multi-radio connectivity devices. "When TI first announced plans for the wireless single-chip market five years ago, we knew it would accelerate wireless technology, especially in high-growth economies, and that has certainly happened," Greg Delagi, senior vice president of TI's Wireless Terminals Business Unit, said in a statement. When it was introduced, the BRF6100 was an industry first, and helped make the use of Bluetooth in wireless phones ubiquitous. It was the first device based on TI's DRP single-chip technology, a maximum digital process that is scalable to support a variety of air interfaces. Today, TI's portfolio of DRP technology-based single-chip solutions ranges from cellular to connectivity technologies, including GSM, GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi. TI expects to have shipped more than 200 million units of DRP technology-based chips by the end of 2007. The company, which has 18 years of wireless product development experience, continues to shape and define the rapidly changing wireless landscape. "Single-chip solutions are truly growing up, and we're going well beyond simply providing a single function device to now providing everything needed for an affordable, feature-rich phone on just one piece of silicon," Delagi said.