DailyTech - Intel Details Hardware Accelerated VOIP

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Hardware Intel Details Hardware Accelerated VOIP
Brandon Hill (Blog) - April 17, 2006 6:30 PM

22 comment(s) - last by dearedhead.. on Apr 19 at 5:23 AM

Intel's 600SM VOIP riser card

"Slick Mountain" brings hardware accelerated VoIP to Intel's desktop platforms

VoIP technology has gained lots of traction in the consumer space in the past few years. Services like Vonage and Skype are signing up customers in record numbers and many local cable providers are starting to get in on the action. Intel's latest roadmap points to an interesting new hardware solution for VoIP.

The 600SM, code-name Slick Mountain, will be a hardware-based PCI 2.2 add-in card that will support wideband audio codecs for improved voice quality. The 600SM card will contain a single RJ11 port which operates with traditional corded or cordless phones. The cards will come with the usual Intel installer and driver package along with dialers for the major VoIP players. Intel is currently working out agreements with many VoIP service providers including CounterPath, Skype, Vonage, Packet 8 and DeltaThree.

The 600SM features support for subscriber line interface chip (SLIC) codecs and foreign exchange station (FXS) lines. The card does not support PSTN, so you will have to pick up an ordinary $3 modem if you wish to make normal analog calls over the 600SM. The only image of the 600SM card we know of (featured, right) very clearly displays the Intel Tiger 320 chipset, also known as the Intel 537 V90 modem.

Such technology would fit in with Intel's Viiv initiative, which has yet to really take off. For those who may need a refresher, Intel Viiv simply lumps a variety of hardware different technologies together under one umbrella and guarantees their functionality in a system – just think Centrino and you get the idea.

Intel has stated that Viiv will allow users to access such services as on-demand movies, music and games as well as a variety of entertainment services. Could the SM600 ors its successors be an integral part in future iterations of Viiv? We'll definitely know more as we approach the card's Q2 '06 launch date.

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Hm...

By Furen on 4/17/2006 6:52:41 PM , Rating: 2

Most VoIP providers are trying to detach themselves from the PC by using stand-alone phones and the like, and here we see Intel trying to bring it back together. While it is quite neat on paper, I think the stand-alone thing has much more going for it (who would want his phone to be bogged down by adware/spyware)...

RE: Hm...

By Knish on 4/17/2006 6:57:39 PM , Rating: 2

to me it makes sense from the call management standpoint. You can have way better apps that support this on the computer than in the stand alone phone. Sure, your computer has to be on for it to work, but let's be honest, who shuts down their computer anymore?

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RE: Hm...

By DigitalFreak on 4/17/2006 8:32:16 PM , Rating: 2

Me.

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RE: Hm...

By brownba on 4/17/2006 9:44:18 PM , Rating: 2

Me too

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RE: Hm...

By Bladen on 4/18/2006 4:24:39 AM , Rating: 2

Hey my computer is down and I can't get it to work. Time to call the shop and...

...Oh wait, my telephone is part of the computer...

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RE: Hm...

By Brainonska511 on 4/18/2006 12:36:06 PM , Rating: 2

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RE: Hm...

By TomZ on 4/17/06, Rating: 0

RE: Hm...

By Furen on 4/17/2006 10:03:01 PM , Rating: 3

And because it is NOT tied to your computer it just works.No downtime due to restarts, updates, incompatibilities, crashes. It even works when there's no power so it's more useful in case of an emergency. I know that the theme right now is convergence but you can't just centralize everything in a single system, especially if that system is nowhere near rock-solid, since that just means that everything will go down at the same time. I'm not trying to say that your system is unstable, but if you take your average person's system... I think it'd be a bad idea to have their 911 calls go through their PCs.

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RE: Hm...

By TomZ on 4/17/06, Rating: 0

RE: Hm...

By dearedhead on 4/19/2006 5:23:12 AM , Rating: 2

Intel intends for this to be integrated into its Viiv initiative. Viiv PCs are intended to be a part of your multimedia experience. They are supposed to be a part of household management and that type of thing. They are intended to be on at all times and new models will include hibernate and sleep states with instant on capabilities (so they claim) and wake on ring, wake on LAN built in.

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PCIe?

By xdrol on 4/17/2006 7:10:03 PM , Rating: 2

A brand new type of hardware, and the first specimen is PCI again. Am I the only one missing PCIe cards for PCIe mobos?

RE: PCIe?

By TomZ on 4/17/2006 9:53:41 PM , Rating: 2

I agree - I think PCI is an inferior technology that needs to go the way of the dinosaur.

But I can also understand the market appeal of the billions of open, available PCI slots out there.

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RE: PCIe?

By creathir on 4/17/2006 9:54:20 PM , Rating: 1

Actually, these things are not "new"...
Maybe new to the staff at Dailytech... but not "new"...

Check out Digium... they make an ENTIRE PBX (that is open source) that works with their cards... (they are PCI though, but I believe they have been around longer than PCIe...)
- Creathir

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RE: PCIe?

By TomZ on 4/17/2006 9:56:53 PM , Rating: 2

What's new is that Intel released this as a product.

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RE: PCIe?

By lemonadesoda on 4/18/2006 5:49:35 AM , Rating: 2

Don't keep bashing PCI... we've heard it all before. Just remember the usage statistics: The very significant majority of PC's (if not all) have PCI slots, whereas relatively few have PCIe.

And some PCIe facts:

1./ PCI is 1Gb/s, and
2./ PCIe x 1 is only 2Gb/s

So PCIe is not truely much faster. Especially since it is the "new" technology. If PCI 2.2 had been revised to PCI 3.0 then I'm quite sure they could have achieved 8Gb/s or more.

So why has the world gone PCIe? Quite simple: cost.

1./ PCIe slots are smaller and cheaper to manufacture and install on the mainboard than PCI
2./ Much less wiring is needed on the mainbaord simplifing the design of mainboard
3./ The interface technology on the card and on the mainboard is much simpler, and again, much cheaper to manufacture.

The only true benefit of PCIe is that bandwidth is PER CHANNEL, so that the bus does't get saturated with a network card or RAID controller.

However, dual channel bandwidth (just like DDR2) could have been very very easily implemented in PCI v2.2. Quad or Oct channel bandwidth could have been implemented too, but then that would need much more mainboard wiring and that increases manufacturing cost.

So it is not that the PCI technology is bad, just that PCIe is a cheaper implementation solution.

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RE: PCIe?

By PrinceGaz on 4/18/2006 6:40:07 AM , Rating: 2

PCI offers a theoretical maximum of 1Gb/s uni-directional bandwidth shared between all PCI slots and other onboard PCI devices. In practice the maximum bandwidth available is somewhat lower than 1Gb/s because of overheads and contention between devices.

PCIe 1x provides a true 2Gb/s of bi-directional bandwidth (a total of 4Gb/s) for every slot. Because it is bi-directional and dedicated to each device, it can sustain the full rated speed.

PCIe is a far better solution than PCI. However it'll be at least another year before PCIe becomes more common for non-graphics cards because almost all mobos have PCI slots but relatively few have PCIe (especially for other than graphics). In the long run, PCIe will provide a better and cheaper solution than PCI ever could.

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Err...

By Ecmaster76 on 4/18/2006 12:54:58 AM , Rating: 1

Correct me if I am wrong but this is just an analog modem. You dial up to your local ISP, and get free long distance.

I think the modem you threw away 5 years ago will work just as well.

Unless of course some people don't have a fast enough computer to run Skype in 'software' mode. *snicker*

Seriously this thing better have some killer VOIP compression algorithms. Of course software support on clients and servers will have to be there too. Marginal to nonexistant improvements or unsupported features (V.92 people?) are not going to help.

RE: Err...

By OrSin on 4/18/2006 9:45:17 AM , Rating: 3

Your completely wrong. It use your internet connection to route VOIP to an regular phone. Its not a modem at all. you need sometype of internet connect to your computer for this to work.

The only way I can see this working is if it cheap as hell and VOIP guys push it. Whick they will not becasue they need to support it for the people to dumb to even understand it. The other way if some great software support lets you do something with it in computer the stand alone boxes can't. Again I doubt it.

If they made a call that works with call center software so all calls in and out cna be recorded I could see some industry use for it.

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RE: Err...

By The Cheeba on 4/18/2006 1:05:41 PM , Rating: 2

They are pushing this in business machines -- which means there are thousands of companies that will blindly buy this.

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If this is such a great product

By PandaBear on 4/18/2006 1:55:21 AM , Rating: 2

Then why aren't Creative making it already? I think it is a "concept car" from Intel again, not really going into production.

RE: If this is such a great product

By Homerboy on 4/18/2006 5:27:01 PM , Rating: 2

I was unaware the Creative was the only company licensed to make a great product.

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Clarification please

By breethon on 4/18/2006 6:27:34 PM , Rating: 2

so the part that talks about a $3 modem....are we talking this will work over dial up? I currently have cable, but when I move to my new house, nothing is available there :( I can only hope that dial up is what they are talking about here.