TI releasing something "game changing" on Sept 16th

[EEVblog]

I saw this (ad?) on EDN's website:

We’re sensing something game changing is coming… Stay tuned to hear a big announcement from Texas Instruments on September 16th!

Guesses?
(no, I have no inside knowledge)
I could just be something lame of course...

[george graves]

Ha!  Do I sense a name change?  Naw. 

[Skimask]

Moving to China with everybody else?

[pickle9000]

A free hamster with the purchase of 10,000 chips?

[c4757p]

They're leaving the chip business to concentrate on selling overpriced calculators?

[marshallh]

Probably another acquisition

[pickle9000]

I'm pretty sure free hamsters would be "Game changing".

[Smokey]

I've never got any free animals of any kind.  I guess I'm playing the wrong game.

[Corporate666]

Maybe I am obtuse, but isn't "we're sensing something game changing" a play on words?

I'll bet Dave's bottom dollar that it's a sensor product.

Actually I thought I read somewhere that TI was due to come out with a new higher resolution MEMS sensor this month. 

[george graves]

Yea - I thought of that too.  Maybe some "wireless sensors on a chip" kind of thing.  Would go well with the "internet of things" trend.

[mrflibble]

Yup, that was also the first thing I thought of when I read that. New sensor Stuff-onna-Chip thingy.

[TerraHertz]

Assuming they haven't been bought by Microsoft. Or Apple.

(Nokia having been Borged by Microsoft. Sheesh.)

[EEVblog]

Yup, that was also the first thing I thought of when I read that. New sensor Stuff-onna-Chip thingy.

That would be "new" enough to make a sensor "game changing" though?

[george graves]

What about an energy harvesting chip with a built in sensor and bluetooth?

Can you do enough "energy harvesting" to do near-feild communications (something like bluetooth) and send a burst of data once a minute or something?

So it would be a wireless, battery-less sensor?

[tinhead]

That would be "new" enough to make a sensor "game changing" though?

if they would acquire e.g. Silabs or Cypress, then for sure

[firewalker]

What else!

A cheap thermal camera sensor! 

Alexander.

[tszaboo]

Integrated MEMS microphone, Gyro, accelerometer, haptics driver, speaker driver and "who cares about this" stuff.

[Corporate666]

Yup, that was also the first thing I thought of when I read that. New sensor Stuff-onna-Chip thingy.

That would be "new" enough to make a sensor "game changing" though?

Keep in mind... game changing by their definition.

I get pretty cool magazines from Future... full of ads that often talk about revolutionary/game-changing/mind-blowing technology.  When the marketing guys get their hands on something, you know it turns to bullshit in record time 

[BravoV]

Wishful thinking, a major breakthrough in FRAM manufacturing process that made it a lot cheaper.

[M. András]

Wishful thinking, a major breakthrough in FRAM manufacturing process that made it a lot cheaper.

and much larger sizes

[mrflibble]

Yup, that was also the first thing I thought of when I read that. New sensor Stuff-onna-Chip thingy.

That would be "new" enough to make a sensor "game changing" though?

According to the TI marketing department, absolutely! According to the rest of the world, probably not. But we'll see. 

[mikeselectricstuff]

Keep in mind... game changing by their definition.

..and their choice of game.
e.g. DLP was game-changing in the projection market, but little else.

[TerraHertz]

Hmm... one idea that kind of fits - an open hardware 3D graphics engine?

TI has a background of doing fast DSP/RISK CPUs, so they'd have some related expertise.
'Game changing', because it's for gaming, but most importantly _changing_ because the current state of open-ness in 3D engines is an abysmal disaster. There's currently no fully documented 3D hardware engine that I know of - all of them are secret, with only binary-blob software drivers publicly available. And those only for Windows, plus if you're very lucky, a deliberately flakey version for Linux.

The end result is, that if you want to do a 3D graphics engine for some non-Windows platform (that isn't Linux either) you are totally out of luck.

Putting it another way, if someone wanted to challenge the Wintel OS monopoly, with an OS and GUI that was actually a decent 3D environment (as opposed to Microsoft's retarded 'Metro' Win8), they JUST.PLAIN.CAN'T at the moment. Regardless of how much the world needs some way to escape from the Microsoft insanity. (Which doesn't involve the 'million monkeys' different kind of insanity of Linux.)

So.... I WISH that's what TI has up their sleeve. But I doubt it will be.

[Bored@Work]

Some lame stuff like a new MSP430 Launchpad version. I mean, TI is currently paying EDN to hype the MSP430. If Ti coordinates its marketing a bit it should be something related to the MSP430.

[Stonent]

Hmm. How about sensors to be used in gaming systems?