Monday, February 2, 2015

Company Profile : Texas Instruments

In 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell uttered the words "Mr Watson come here I want you", the age of telephony was born. While at first the development of the telephone was considered by many as a scientific curiosity, like many other great invent-ions it has significantly impacted upon society. Today, some 124 years after Mr Bell summoned Mr Watson, there are several hundred million telephones in use throughout the world. Telephony has become an essential part or life, both in business and pleasure.

While the first personal computer introduced in the early 1980s offered a significant advances over ENIAC, they had very limited capabilities. Since that time, desktop computational power has dramatically increased and together with other hardware and software developments, we now have personal computers with mind-boggling specifications and capabilities. We see processors operating with clock speeds of 1000 MHz (that is 1,000,000,000 cycles per second), vast amounts of high speed random access memory, multi gigabyte hard disks and enhanced input/output capabilities.

By now, one must have guessed which company I am talking about here.


                      
            ( Electronics and TI driving the next age of Automotive technology)

Oil is not the only swansong for Texas. Texas is also the home of one of the leading global producer of semiconductor devices. It doesn't just manufacture them, it also designs them.Matched by Intel and Samsung Electronics, Texas Instruments - based out of Dallas,Texas - is the home of 35,000 employees across Europe, Asia, America. With Revenues close of $ 12 billion and total assets worth $18 billion, Texas instruments has spread its wings across all sectors of society- notably automotive, power, education. Texas Instruments has consistently figured in the Fortune 500.

I come from an engineering background , from one of the leading engineering colleges in India, from a department which closely links with the concepts of Electronics Engineering. Hence, it is quite natural that pronunciation of Texas Instruments is not something new for me. Moreover, TI also has several products in the segment of power management through application of power electronics- the MOSFET, the Radio Frequency Regulator, Converters and regulators- the very basic concepts of digital and analog electronics that we had learnt during our undergraduate labs and coursework. TI has kept the innovation going and has also come out with a low cost and accurate power metering device for digital power. I have been a part of a major power generating company and these products were a norm here- where efficiency in power generation and control system regulations of a huge power plant depends upon the accuracy and performance of these small 10-20V Integrated Circuits and Semiconductor devices

(A flowchart for a power management IC. I/p are Voltage references in general)

Not just Power sector, TI has spread its wings in the field of sports where runners and swimmers might have come across these small chips which help you improve your performances. Electronics have found its applications everywhere -to make life better and to bring efficiency at work. Routers, Intel Pentiums, storage devices, even the electronic guitar or the banjo. Talk of the world of football or cricket- the goal line technology is a small fundamental application of the sensor devices or the snickometer in cricket.  The TI-Nspire has brought a change in the way we think with our calculations - simple concept of application of Digital and Analog and vice versa conversions. Innovation has led to transistors which gave a new way to the world of music.

(Just let the chicken wings cook themselves using a Wi-Fi contraption)

In our lives, we find the application of electronics everywhere and being a part of Dallas, it gives immense pleasure to me to be writing about a major company in this domain of operations which has the name of Texas in its company name. We lived in a world of vacuum tube circuits from where we moved to microprocessors. Today we have Digital clocks and medical instruments to get out sugar levels tested in a minute. World of electronics and communication has changed fast. Texas Instruments has played its part appreciably. A long way still to go and looking into this market- it can only expand , grow and innovate. With the best minds drawn from across the world, TI has a promising future. Go Texas !
         
                          

                                              A small Wikipedia introduction :

Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) is an American electronics company that designs and makes semiconductors, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globally.Headquartered at Dallas, Texas, United States, TI is the third largest manufacturer of semiconductors worldwide after Intel and Samsung, the second largest supplier of chips for cellular handsets after Qualcomm, and the largest producer of digital signal processors (DSPs) and analog semiconductors, among a wide range of other semiconductor products, including calculators, micro controllers and multi-core processors. Texas Instruments is among the Top 20 Semiconductor producing companies in the world.
Texas Instruments was founded in 1951. It emerged after a reorganization of Geophysical Service. This company manufactured equipment for use in the seismic industry as well as defense electronics. TI began research in transistors in the early 1950s and produced the world's first commercial silicon transistor. In 1954, Texas Instruments designed and manufactured the first transistor radio and Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit in 1958 while working at TI's Central Research Labs. The company produced the first integrated circuit-based computer for the U.S. Air Force in 1961. TI researched infrared technology in the late 1950s and later made radar systems as well as guidance and control systems for both missiles and bombs. The hand-held calculator was introduced to the world by TI in 1967.
In the 1970s and 80s the company focused on consumer electronics including digital clocks, watches, hand-held calculators, home computers as well as various sensors. In 1997, its defense business was sold to Raytheon. In 2007, Texas Instruments was awarded the Manufacturer of the Year for Global Supply Chain Excellence by World Trade magazine. Texas Instruments is considered to be one of the most ethical companies in the world.
After the acquisition of National Semiconductor in 2011, the company has a combined portfolio of nearly 45,000 analog products and customer design tools, making it the world's largest maker of analog technology components. In 2011, Texas Instruments ranked 175 in the Fortune 500. TI is made up of two main divisions: Semiconductors (SC) and Educational Technology (ET) of which Semiconductor products account for approximately 96% of TI's revenue.

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