At last month's TI Developer Conference, TI convened a panel discussion featuring some of its top management. This panel addressed a broad range of topics such as TI's plans for its architectures and the changing competitive landscape. One of the most interesting topics discussed was the growing competition between Intel and TI. Intel has made no secret of its intent to wrest the market for handheld wireless devices from TI. Although TI holds the lead in cell phones, Intel has established itself as the one to beat in PDAs; what will happen as these markets converge?

These days, digital signal processing enables everything from satellites to engine controllers. With their decades of experience, one would expect DSP processor vendors to have a lock on these applications. All they have to do is belly up to the all-you-can-eat buffet, right? Not if FPGA vendors can help it.

Last month the IP licensing division of DSP Group introduced its first platform offering, XpertTeak. The fully synthesizable XpertTeak platform consists of the dual-MAC TeakDSPCore core, data and program memory, and peripherals like timers, buffered serial ports, and a DMA controller. This platform strikes a middle ground between DSP Group's existing offerings of stand-alone DSP cores and application-specific combinations of DSP cores, software, memory, and peripherals.

Is the lowly camera the focal point for a revolution in convergence devices? In the past few months consumer electronics manufacturers have shipped a camcorder with a built-in MP3 player and voice recorder; a PDA with a built-in camera and an MP3 player; and a cell phone with (you guessed it) a built-in camera and voice recorder. Are these devices harbingers of a golden age of consumer electronics? Or are they like Frankenstein's monster: technically brilliant but disastrous in practice?

Over the years, futurists have made technology predictions that seem ridiculous in retrospect. Even brilliant, serious thinkers promised us hover cars and space colonies that have yet to pan out; what went wrong? In many cases, the technology was available, but there was no business case for the predicted advances. Sure, we can colonize the moon—if somebody is willing to foot the bill.