200 Channels of V.17 Fax Receive on One Chip?
Texas Instruments' new 90-nanometer process is allowing Commetrex to bring a new level of
affordability, density, and power efficiency to telephony systems. TI has recently begun to ship its
1-GHz TMS320C6400, the industry's highest-performance DSP, and has slashed the price of
500-, 600-, and 720-MHz parts in half.
Meanwhile, Commetrex is optimizing its algorithms to take advantage of the architectural and
speed advantages of the 'C6400, which delivers four, 16-bit GigaMACS, allowing us to target 192
channels of VoIP and FoIP on one chip. We have completed the necessary fax-modem
optimizations. Now, we're busy with the vocoders and our G.168 LEC.
For more information, contact Mike Coffee at 770.449.7775x310 or sales@commetrex.com.
Or visit, http://www.commetrex.com/press_releases/
02032004TIGHzDSP.html.
For more information on Texas Instruments, contact http://www.ti.com.
Texas Instruments Developer Conference
As a leading member of the Texas Instruments Third-Party Developer's Network, Commetrex
participated in the TI Developer's Conference held February 18-20 in Houston, Texas.
The conference offered demonstrations, presentations and hands-on experience in the areas of
telecom, video/imaging, audio, security, and control. Featured technologies included high-
performance analog, digital signal processing, and digital light processing. More than 60
exhibitors and 70 speakers participated in this year's show.
As an exhibitor, Commetex demonstrated OpenEndpoint, a product that provides the telephony
software required to implement an IP endpoint voice-fax gateway or integrated access device.
OpenEndpoint is a comprehensive product that includes POTS interface software, signal
generation-detection, packet voice, and T.38 and/or I.366.2 fax relay executing in Commetrex'
OpenMedia standards-based streams framework.
Bruce Adams, Director, Signal Processing Technologies, presented, "A High-Density Endpoint
Using the TMS320C6000T DSP." Adams compared low-density gateways that target the
residential and small-business user by connecting legacy terminals to an IP network with high-
density endpoints that allow access-providers and emerging-economy PTTs to telephony enable
dozens of subscribers through a single 64-Kb IP connection.
For more information on OpenEndpoint, contact Mike Coffee at 770.449.7775x310 or
sales@commetrex.com. Or visit
http://www.commetrex.com/products/
algorithms/OpenEndpoint.html.
For more information on TI's Third Party Program, visit
http://focus.ti.com/catalog/docs/
thirdpartycatalog.tsp?templateId=
5681&navigationId=10205
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Telephony Blade Costs are Out of Sight!
Okay, why does a telephony-media blade cost 10 times what a similar-complexity server blade
cost? That's an important question since it affects the number of subscribers a carrier's capex
budget can serve. It affects the affordability of services and the profitability of all kinds of industry
participants.
Does it have to do with the cost of the processors? Before you hang it on the DSPs, consider
that a DSP, capable of supporting 96 low-bit-rate VoIP channels with
echo canceller, costs less
than $50. So, it must be the extra components and testing required by high-availability
requirements. Right? Well, although there may be hot-swap hardware costs, typically, high-
availability is achieved with software and redundant copies of these high-cost boards, not
changes to the boards themselves.
Okay, I'll give you a hint: software. It's been observed that these boards have margins
approaching that of software. And it's true. The developer must recover, over a relatively low
number of units, a huge investment in proprietary software. It's as if each developer of a PC had
to develop a proprietary operating system. We wouldn't be paying $2,000 for a server blade;
we'd be paying $20,000 for it so that Dell or IBM could recover their investment in the proprietary
OS.
So how do we get the cost down so we can reduce the price and increase the volume? The
answer may lie in the framework software virtually every high-capacity digital-media telephony
system must have. Today, they're all proprietary and hugely expensive.
But each equipment vendor does not have to develop a streams framework or the even more
expensive telephony middleware. Commetrex offers these major software systems as off-the-
shelf products: OpenMedia and Open Telecommunications Framework (OTF) Kernel. They are
also available integrated as BladeWare for host-signal-processing applications. With Commetrex,
the telephony digital-media equipment developer can capture the time-to-market and cost
advantages of integrated closed-architecture value-adding systems while staying in control of his
product platform. We call it "staying out of captive-technology jail".
For more information on OpenMedia, OTF Kernel, and BladeWare, visit
http://www.commetrex.com/products/
mspe/openmedia/OpenMediaSDK.html
http://www.commetrex.com/products/
CTMiddleware/OTF/OTFKernel.html
http://www.commetrex.com/BladeWare.html. Or contact, Mike
Coffee at 770.449.7775x310 or sales@commetrex.com.
Processing the Media Stream
We've been writing a great deal of late about host signal processing. But the DSP remains the
engine of choice for high-density systems, so the DSP remains a critical piece in the telecom
puzzle. It wasn't always so, but today nearly every telephony media stream encounters signal
processing somewhere along its path. And IP telephony wouldn't be possible without it. Since
not all DSPs have the same performance and features, choosing the right one for the job is rather
important.
At Commetrex, we have long focused on high-density systems, so we've gravitated toward the
most powerful DSPs available. That means the Texas Instruments TMS320C6000 product line.
Generally, higher MCPS (Mega-Cycles Per Second) means reduced board real estate and more
channels to amortize the overhead of the streams framework, which at Commetrex is our
OpenMedia. Fewer packages also means reduced interface complexity in hardware and
software.
Commetrex has optimized all of its media-processing technologies for the 'C6000 product line.
We achieved densities of 30 V.17 fax-receive modems on the 200-MHz 'C6201after a few months
effort. We have now optimized that code for the 'C6400, and have reduced the megacycles
needed per channel to just five. This means up to 200 14,400-bps fax receivers on a single 1-
GHz chip.
This is because the 'C6400 isn't just a fast 'C6200. While both have 8 execution units which
produce up to eight results per cycle, the 'C6200 gives us two multiply accumulates (MACS) per
cycle, while the 'C6400 can give us four. There are now 64 registers, instead of 32, meaning
fewer "pushes and pops". And there are many more architectural enhancements that have
allowed us to go from 6.8 MCPS per channel to 5.2 MCPS. Next: low-bit-rate vocoders and our
G.168 LEC.
If you're interested in learning more about Commetrex' media technologies and our optimizations
for the TI 'C6000, drop Bruce Adams, Director, Signal Processing Technologies, an e-mail at
badams@commetrex.com.
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