Mindspeed Technologies Inc., a leading supplier of semiconductor solutions for network infrastructure applications, announced its seventh-generation Comcerto voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) processor, optimized for emerging IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) networking applications.

The Comcerto 900 Series processor will enable service providers to solve the increasingly difficult challenge of seamlessly transcoding wireless and wireline protocols in order to transport voice and video between legacy circuit-switched and next-generation packet-based networks.

The Comcerto 900 Series processor is optimized for Mindspeed's recently announced wireless software suite and proven wireless codec portfolio, as well as its widely deployed wireline VoIP-over-Cable software suite. Together, the Comcerto hardware and software combination delivers all necessary media stream processing and transport layer building blocks for seamlessly transmitting highly secure, carrier-class-quality voice and video across both wireless and wireline networks.

"This is the next-generation flagship offering in our field-proven Comcerto processor family, which has been adopted by many of the world's leading telecommunications equipment manufacturers worldwide," said Raouf Halim, Mindspeed's chief executive officer. "We designed the Comcerto 900 Series processor specifically for next-generation IMS networking equipment, which requires fast and highly efficient processing in support of a complex assortment of wireline and wireless applications, IP protocols, security standards and high-quality voice technology."

Mindspeed's Comcerto 900 Series processor will enable service providers to deploy a variety of new IP telephony services in the coming years. Dell'Oro Group predicted rapid growth for this market in its 5-Year Forecast Report released last February. In announcing the report, Dell'Oro's Steve Raab, director of IP telephony research, said, "Today's residential and business VoIP services will expand to include fixed-mobile-convergence, multimedia services and gaming as service providers adopt the emerging IMS architecture." The firm predicted that overall market revenues for these services will grow from $1.6 billion in 2004 to $4.7 billion in 2010.

When combined with Mindspeed's various software suites, the Comcerto 900 Series processor delivers the industry's first complete IMS solution. Applications include class 4 and class 5 switches, mobile switching centers, radio network controllers, base station controllers, access gateways, IP-DSLAMs and digital loop carriers (DLCs).

Technical Details

The Comcerto 900 Series M82910 integrates a total of 18 high-performance processors, including a powerful DSP, a flexible packet processing engine and additional hardware co-processors for echo cancellation and video processing tasks. A true carrier-class solution for VoIP and Voice-over-ATM (VoATM) applications, the M82910 processor supports both packet-to-time-division-multiplexing (packet-to-TDM) and packet-to-packet operation across the entire range of IP modulations to ensure high-quality, high-reliability service delivery across legacy circuit-switched and next-generation IP-based networks.

The device processes complete IP packets and ATM cells, and provides an ideal engine to run Mindspeed's comprehensive suite of field-proven modulations, echo cancellers, voice coders and communications protocols, as well as third-generation wireless voice coders, such as adaptive multi rate (AMR) technology for W-CDMA-based networks. A variety of industry-standard streaming interfaces are also provided for scalable system integration, including the high-speed Ethernet RMII/S3MII/GMII/RGMII interface.

The Comcerto M82910 is capable of processing more than 672 channels of carrier-class VoIP for wireline applications. For wireless applications, the M82910 can process more than 200 channels of AMR with complex echo cancelling. AMR is the standard speech codec adopted by the Third Generation Partnership Project, or 3GPP. The M82910 also executes Mindspeed's unique approach for mixing and matching codecs, so that each individual active voice channel may operate any voice codec from among a broad range of options.

The M82910 processor's extensive suite of wireline, PacketCable, W-CDMA and CDMA2000(R) network applications includes all necessary voice codecs, multi-protocol packet-stream support, security functionality (including voice payload encryption and authentication) and diagnostic reporting.

The M82910 is both pin- and API-compatible with Mindspeed's previous generation of carrier-class voice processors to give designers a seamless migration path to higher performance and integration with minimal system development time.

Pricing and Availability

The Comcerto 900 Series M82910 processor is available now in sample quantities with production quantities expected in the fourth calendar quarter of 2006. It is packaged in a 19mm BGA and priced at $250 per unit in OEM volumes of 10,000.