A battle of the titans is shaping up for supremacy in embedded application processors—processors intended for next-generation portable information appliances like multimedia cell phones and PDAs. The stakes in this battle are enormous: according to Micrologic Research, worldwide cell phone shipments alone are expected to exceed 450 million units this year. And the contestants are appropriately gargantuan: Texas Instruments, the long-time king of digital signal processors (DSPs), is pitted against Intel, the 800-pound gorilla of general-purpose processors (GPPs).
The processors engaged in this struggle reveal much about each company’s background: TI’s entrant, OMAP, combines a DSP and a GPP on a single chip, while Intel’s challenger, the PXA2xx, is a single-core GPP—albeit one with significant DSP enhancements. TI contends that the increasing signal-processing demands of handheld applications warrant a separate DSP, while Intel argues that data, not signals, are the real driving force behind these same applications. Of course both companies have taken self-serving stances, but both architectural approaches have merit.
This contest is particularly interesting given the intertwined histories of these two companies. For example, Intel’s 2920, introduced way back in 1979, was one of the first commercially available DSPs. TI didn’t introduce its first DSP, the TMS32010, until 1982. Of course, Intel can take little pride in its early lead: the 2920 was a flop, while the TMS32010 became the progenitor of today’s most popular DSPs. Ironically, one reason the TMS32010 succeeded is that TI was the first company to provide PC-based development tools for a DSP. Hence, TI’s success in the DSP marketplace was closely tied to Intel’s success in the PC marketplace.
So who will win this contest of the giants? The answer may depend on how quickly users take up sophisticated next-generation devices and which of these devices’ features emerge as “killer applications.” And as last year’s cell phone glut demonstrated, predicting consumer demand and preferences is a tricky business indeed. In any event, the increasingly similar capabilities of their products assure that Intel and TI will square off in more Godzilla-sized battles in the coming years.
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