Voice Communications Over The Internet

Intel Introduces New Products For Transmitting Voice Communications
Over The Internet
Silicon, Software and Reference Designs Enable Carrier-Class Voice Gateways

Intel Corporation has introduced a suite of communications products, including software, silicon components and reference designs, that round out the company's comprehensive portfolio for building the systems used to transmit voice communications over the Internet.

Intel's Voice-over-Packet (VoP) technology will allow telecommunications service providers to offer more services such as voice, fax and data applications at lower cost than today's services. As traditional voice networks based on dedicated circuit switching technology transition to lower-cost packet-based networks used for sending data over the Internet, service providers can scale their networks to meet increasing customer demand while maintaining the high levels of reliability and service that are required in telecommunications.

"To compete in today's environment, service providers must deploy, provision and manage a greater range of customized products and services within reduced space and power constraints," said Tom Franz, vice president and general manager of the Intel Access and Switching Group. "Intel's recent acquisition of VxTel provided us with new DSP capabilities for VoP building blocks designed to support multiple services and protocols with flexible software and highly integrated silicon."

Intel's comprehensive VoP products are designed for communication equipment manufacturers building high-density, carrier-grade network equipment that bridge traditional connections such as T1/E1/J1 connections from the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), to packet-based networks, including Gigabit Ethernet and Internet Protocol networks. Customers will have access to a broad range of VoP solutions at the silicon, reference design, software and board levels to accelerate their time to market.

The three new products announced by Intel today include the Intel® IXS1000 Media Signal Processor with a comprehensive software suite, an eight-port T1/E1/J1 line interface unit and an eight-port T1/E1/J1 framer. Network equipment built on Intel's silicon components and software can process more than 2000 simultaneous voice connections on a single VoP line card, which is more than four times the number of connections available on the market today.

These components are designed to fit on communications line cards at central office locations and mark the first set of leadership technologies introduced as a result of Intel's acquisition of VxTel Inc. earlier this year. These products also enable flexible service provisioning, which is the capability to dynamically adjust to voice, data or fax calls information sent over phone lines). These products also offer voice quality service options and provide increased network availability through advanced network management tools.

The Intel® IXS1000 Media Signal Processor is optimized for VoP applications and is based on a Digital Signal Processing architecture specifically designed for carrier-grade voice, fax and data processing applications. Intel is offering both VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and VoATM (Voice over Asynchronous Transfer Mode) reference designs that include complete hardware, software and application program interfaces, leading to faster time-to-market for equipment manufacturers.

Intel's VoP software suite includes: ITU (International Telecommunication Union) standard voice compression, echo cancellation, silence suppression, Dual Tone Multi-Frequency and tone processing, IP and ATM packetisation, jitter buffering and packet loss recovery with a single API, enabling the communications equipment manufacturers to easily integrate the Intel solution.
The Intel® LXT3108 8-port T1/E1/J1 short and long haul Line Interface Unit is the industry's first sampling device of its kind. The Intel® IXF3208 8-port T1/E1/J1 Framer includes the Intel® On-Chip Performance Report Messaging database, which off-loads the system CPU and speeds development by gathering a performance monitoring database. The LXT3108 and the IXF3208 components also include Intel® Hitless Protection Switching for network redundancy without mechanical relays, and the Intel® Pulse Template Matching software, which reduces design risk by allowing automatic signal pulse matching rather than changing resistors and capacitors manually on a line card.

Based on the Intel® Internet Exchange Architecture, Intel's VoP building blocks are programmable and scalable at the chip, board and system level to facilitate flexible service provisioning, field upgrades and subscriber growth, enabling longer time-in-market for equipment suppliers and service providers.

The IXS1000 and the LXT3108 are now being sampled to communications equipment manufacturers. The components are priced at $467.00 and $61.58 each respectively in 1,000 unit quantities. The IXF3208 will be available for sampling later this year. Additional information is available at www.intel.com/design/ixa.

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