Beck: Hi Gora. Its a pleasure to speak with you again. Can you tell me a little about yourself please? Where did you go to school and how long have you been with Gennum?
Ganguli: Thanks Doug. I have an engineering degree and a masters in business administration, both from McGill University. I worked for about seventeen years for IBM in their microelectronic division and Ive been at Gennum for the last five years.
Beck: I think many of the readers know the name Gennum, but perhaps you can tell us a little about GENNUM and what do they do?
Ganguli: Sure Doug. Gennum is a semi-conductor products company, we design and manufacture chip solutions for a variety of markets. We make key components for video routers to recondition signals to high quality levels and we also work in the data communications market, transporting signals from one place to another in the world of data. We provide chips that recondition the signals that move through the internet at very high speeds. And as you know, were in the hearing instruments business too. My area is the Hearing Instrument Product Division, which is approximately 40% of the total Gennum Company business. Weve been in the hearing business for the last 30 years.
Beck: Gora, can you address where we are and where were going as providers of technology for hearing impaired people?
Ganguli: I think were capable of very powerful hardware platforms. Audiologists and researchers can, and soon will, develop very sophisticated ways of addressing hearing problems in terms of adaptive systems that protect and respond to the acoustic environment in a much more sophisticated way than previous generation products.
Beck: You specified hardware but I think many of us look to technological and processing improvements and changes via software?
Ganguli: Well yes, typically thats how people do think. But, sophisticated software requires correspondingly sophisticated hardware and we have a new hardware platform coming out towards the end of this year, with many more circuits in the same size package, as the chips available today.
Beck: What would more circuits in a smaller package do, that we cant do today?
Ganguli: Well. basically this change provides more horsepower.
Beck: More as in doubling the power?
Ganguli: Were looking at 6-8 times more power than the current chip.
Beck: And does that mean 6-8 times the ability to process information in a given time frame?
Ganguli: Yes, thats right. What we currently offer the patient is somewhat of a trade off between purpose, capability and battery power potential. But were really going to rev up the capability side of the equation, and the result should be impressive. Someone in the industry said that in the first few years of digitalization of hearing aids, weve basically made digital versions of analog units. Which is essentially true, and that made sense as the starting point, but were ready to explore the capability of digital technology in its own right, and that is just beginning to happen!
Beck: I agree. Ive heard that claim before and it appears to be true, but I wonder -- Can you give me some insight as to what adding more horsepower to digital circuits would allow?
Ganguli: It vastly increases the amount of software code thats running, and the more code you run, the more sophisticated your program is. Designers can increase the amount of code now, but it burns up a lot of energy and depletes resources.
Beck: Do you anticipate video capabilities being integrated with hearing technology, and if so, what might that application look like?
Ganguli: I think something like a convergence is happening. We identified that years ago as a probable goal, and in the mainstream world of multi-media, audio, music and telephones -- its happening. Another major initiative is the wireless movement and finding ways to use that technology to help hearing impaired people who already have a hearing device in their ear! In other words, because they already have a device in their ear, why not use that device to bring audio, CDs, DVDs, AM/FM and telephone conversations into that same device?
Beck: This is very exciting, and it has the appearance of potentially opening the personal sound system flood gates for hearing impaired and normal-hearing people. I believe what youre saying is that basically anyone, a consumer, or a patient would have an ear impression taken and a custom made ear piece would be created for them, fitting perfectly and matching their skin color and texture, and then inside of the ear piece is where the magic would reside. Not only would there be a special circuit inside the ear piece that hearing healthcare professionals could program for amplification purposes, but within that device, you would have audio capabilities for DVD, MP3, CD, television, television, movies, cell phone, AM/FM and just about any other technology that transmits or transfers sound!
Ganguli: Thats right. Thats exactly what were talking about here. I dont think were talking years of development time either, I think its coming next year. The digital technology were working on is going to make that happen in a timeframe that is probably going to surprise a lot of people. At the recent AAA in Salt Lake City, we launched a combination telephone headset-hearing aid for hearing impaired people who are cell phone users. Were also developing and bringing to market, in 2005, an ultra-low power wireless technology that will work off traditional hearing aid batteries and will consume power in the same way as traditional hearing aids but will provide additional functions to feed audio and telephone signals into your hearing device.
Beck: So people wearing hearing aids could communicate through that new device via cell phones, CD, AM-FM or whatever?
Ganguli: Right, exactly.
Beck: And so somebody wearing a hearing aid can use your little black box as an interface between their hearing aid and their cell phone?
Ganguli: Thats right, and it will be commercially available early next year.
Beck: That is amazing.
Ganguli: It really is. And the second application is similar to whats available today in the world of wireless FM systems itll allow the feeding of audio directly into the hearing aid in schools and other areas and the quality of the audio would be much higher and implementation costs are much lower with wireless digital technology, and there is less interference with the wireless digital signal too.
Beck: So were really talking about using digital as digital, rather than creating digital versions of analog technologies.
Ganguli: Thats correct. The third application has even more applicability, and a lot of promise but its in the early stage of development. Basically the idea is that instead of two independent hearing aids, one on the left and one on the right, and they dont communicate with each other at all.the idea is to have them wirelessly connected, actually communicating with each other. You can move audio heard from one hearing aid to the other side, and you can transfer data from one to the other, and you can do some very clever and creative things in the world of directionality. Hearing aid manufacturers have been thinking about this for some time and we believe that our technology will allow them to bring it to life.
Beck: Would you be able to program phase relationships?
Ganguli: Yes. This will really change the way hearing aids work, and it will change the wearers experience with hearing aids too. So in essence, what weve done is designed a wireless technology specifically for the size and battery constraints of hearing instruments, and were addressing this issue not just as a communication problem to be solved, but also as a lifestyle product, something to enhance quality of life. So were pretty excited about it.
Beck: It really is an amazing step forward. When you think about all the sound production products, and the ability to wirelessly connect them to hearing aids wow!
Ganguli: It really gets back to the idea of what the additional horsepower allows, as we discussed earlier. Imagine an individual wearing a device in their ear, and they want to make a cell phone call. All theyll need to do is say dial, and then the name if the person they want to call and the voice recognition dials. The microphone is in the earpiece and the software will reside in the ear device once we have the horsepower to do that, and the ear device communicates with the cell phone.
Beck: Thats amazing.
Ganguli: I think our vision of what technology will enable in the hearing aid market is moving in a different direction and we are excited about the possibilities.
Beck: Thanks Gora. It is a pleasure to speak with you.
Ganguli: Thank you too Doug. Its been fun for me to share these ideas with you, and I hope to see you soon.
For more inforamtion on GENNUM, visit www.gennum.com.
