Published on 08/11/2005
Click to enlarge via SlashphoneTexas Instruments Incorporated (TI) Chairman Tom Engibous announced at a press event that TI has made a live phone call from India to Europe, adding more weight to its single-chip cell phone technology. This demonstrates TI's strategy to deliver a single-chip cell phone solution for dirt cheap handsets in many emerging markets, including India. Although 80% of the world's population have wireless coverage, only 20% subscribe to wireless services due to the high cost of owning a cell phone. TI intends to meet this huge need of delivering mobile services to the rest of the world's population while minimizing the cost involved. Last December saw TI announcing the industry's first single-chip solution for mobile phones, which was developed through TI's very own 90nm CMOS manufacturing technology.
Publisher’s note: In the semi-conductor world, making cheaper electronics usually means making the actual chips smaller. The reason is that the chip manufacturing cost is proportional to the size of the electronic chips (expressed square millimeter). By going to a smaller transistor size (90nm), TI is able to incorporate more functionality into a single chip (whereas phone manufacturers were using two or three), thus decreasing the cost of the whole system.