TI to hold developer conference in Bangalore

Texas Instruments, whose R&D center has been in India for the last 21 years, is happy at the way its partner network of technology solutions providers is growing in the country.

To emphasize the significance of this and to move beyond being known just for its Silicon, Texas Instruments (TI) intends to highlight some of the technologies its partners have developed on TI platforms. This will be one of the main highlights of the ninth edition of the Texas Instruments Developer Conference (TIDC), slated to commence in Bangalore on November 30.

Sham Banerji, head, software development, TI India, shared with Priya Padmanabhan of CyberMedia News some of the highlights of the event. Excerpts from the interview:

How do you plan to engage the TI developer ecosystem at this year’s developer conference?

TI does not believe in compartmentalized innovation and we want to bring more partners to the table using our platforms. It is more like network innovation and our partnership program is built around that.

At the TIDC, we plan to celebrate the partners on stage with live demonstrations of applications from like high-definition video conferencing to low-cost handsets.

Take our Da Vinci platform. It is not just a Silicon platform but also has basic software not just for developers; multimedia codex; defined standard APIs and we also have a network of partners who support the platform. It’s a whole package. We know roughly the territory we are targeting. But the product innovation comes from the partners. In India, we are encouraged to see the networks and successful companies like Ittiam Systems.

Are you highlighting any particular platforms this year?

We will be talking on signal processing technology and are working on spreading the high-performance analog message this year. This is the critical element that allows signal processing to talk to the real world. High performance analog is a vital part of total customer solution. We will also focus on radio frequency technologies like Bluetooth wireless and wireless LAN.

Our continued focus is on making sure the university education also feeds into the pipeline. We have built up a network of about 500 Digital Signal Processors (DSP) labs around the country. Now we will focus on how we can establish high-performance analog as a part of the curriculum.

We are getting more solution centric. We are trying to look at the system level diagram and at the whole picture and not just the DSPs.

For a long time, India was more of an R&D hub for TI than a market. In the last few years, you have started to tap the local market. What are the areas you are looking at?

We are looking at India as a market base. Our focus is inclined to the ecosystem that can build products for the domestic market. According to a Frost & Sullivan report, domestic consumption of Consumer Electronics in India by 2015 will be $1 billion worth of electronics per day.

As far as Silicon revenues for TI goes, we are talking about a $15 billion semiconductor market by 2015. That’s why we are here to stay. We see the proverbial hockey stick growth happening.

MSP 430 is a microcontroller that is relevant in the emerging Indian market for low-power applications. It can be used for applications like energy meters, utility meters and in medical electronics – in devices like glucometers, sugar level monitors and even smart cards. This effectively replaces the old generation of micro controllers.

Another area is portable power applications. A well-kept secret we have is around power management: to manage portable power, system level power, fluctuations and high voltage issues. These can be used in sophisticated laptops, portable media players and cell phones. This enables switching between voltages and active power management that allows you to use different levels of voltages.

When Rich Templeton was here early this year, he spoke about engaging the entertainment industry in India. What is the update on that segment?

We have a digital cinema solution - Digital Light Processing (DLP) and have deployed it at the Sathyam theater in Chennai. On the broader market that involves set top boxes, theaters, entertainment on cell phones, content providers would be a significant control point. With the huge source of content available in India and with a large number of customers, using open standards like DVBH and IPTV would be some of our focus areas. These areas need signal processing especially in set-top boxes and also high-speed conversion of analog to digital.

I think the ecosystem is ready and able. But there are major regulatory and bandwidth decisions that have to be enabled to make this happen. We are working with government and agencies and also with customers. Be it is wired or wireless, we are agnostic in terms of believing in open standards unlike competitors who have proprietary technologies.

© CyberMedia News