It's anybody's game in cellular: TI one-chip push revives integration issue

摘要

Manhasset, N.Y. - When Tom Engibous, Texas Instruments Inc.'s president and chief executive of-ficer, declared last week that TI would have a single-chip GSM cell phone by 2004, he effectively put up all the company's crown jewels as collateral. Its semiconductor-process, system-integration, DSP/ RISC, software and RF expertise will all have to be leveraged for a project that, if realized, could turn the cellular competitive landscape on its head. The implications of TI's drive into RF integration are clear for such longstanding woreless powerhouses-and proponents of partitioned, mul-tichip radios-as Motorola and Analog Devices, which may have to fight harder to hold their respective market shares. But for makers of discrete RF components the news is somewhat darker. With more and more of their pie being eaten by advancing CMOS processes, these vendors stand to take the hardest hit from what TI is proposing.