Digium Releases Hardware-based Voice Compression PCI Express Card for Asterisk Systems
Posted June 30th, 2009 by admin
Digium releasesthe TCE400B PCI Express card for use with voice applications based on the open sourceAsterisk telephony platform. The new card provides hardware-based voice compressionand decompression (codec) capabilities to shift transcoding from software to hardware.Using the TCE400B in place of a software-only solution places fewer demands on serversand frees up Asterisk to more efficiently process calls and to provide functionalityfor phone systems such as call recording, conference calling and interactive voiceresponse.
Asterisk is the most widely used open source telephony engine and tool kit. By offeringflexibility to access and alter the software code, Asterisk empowers developers andsystems integrators to create VoIP communication solutions that match the specificneeds of a business. Many businesses use Asterisk as a PBX to manage phone calls,but it’s also commonly used as a gateway between IP and PSTN networks, a telephonyfeature server and as the basis for call center applications.
In addition to its support for G.729a transcoding, the TCE400B gives Asterisk theability to convert G.723.1 compressed audio into other formats, a capability not otherwisepossible with Asterisk or software-only solutions. The card’s capabilities allow transcodingbetween simple, G.711 u-law and a-law, and complex, G.729a 8.0 kbit/s and G.723.15.3/6.3 kbit/s, codecs. When running in G.729a mode, the TCE400B can support 120 simultaneoustransformations; in a mixed G.729a and G.723.1 mode, it supports 92 simultaneous transformations.
