ST and Octasic Team on Voice-over-Packet Silicon

STMicroelectronics and Octasic are working together to deliver a family of voice-over-packet (VoP) ICs. The solutions will be based on ST's 0.13-µm and 90-nm semiconductor process technology and Octasic's designs for VoP and Voice Quality Enhancement (VQE), which includes technology for line and acoustic echo cancellation, noise reduction capabilities, vocoding and packetization. The first product is slated for availability this quarter and a second product is expected shortly after. The companies also agreed to cooperate on future system-on-chip (SoC) VoP devices which will be implemented in 90-nm and below process technologies.


Target applications for Voice-over-Packet silicon includes telecom infrastructure (central office) and enterprise equipment, IP-PBX gateways, OLTs in PONs, and Media Gateways in WANs.


Octasic's processors are optimized to perform key voice functions such as carrier-grade echo cancellation, packetization, and compression.





Octasic's VQE/Echo Cancellation devices offer capacities from 32 to 672 channels. The devices deliver G.169 automatic level control and acoustic echo cancellation, as well as additional features such as advanced noise reduction, advanced signaling tone detection (DTMF, R1,...), announcement playout, full way conferencing and ADPCM. Octasic also uses an optimized physical design methodology that extends down to gate-level, significantly reducing die area, net lengths and power while boosting performance. Octasic said this gives its design much more processing power (2-4x) per die area.


Octasic has tested its design with BT Exact Labs, which found the echo canceller "comfortably above the acceptability threshold for inclusion in carrier class networks."http://www.octasic.com
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