Mindspeed Announces Flagship Comcerto Solution For Converged Video/VoIP Media Gateways In Carrier Infrastructure

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. Mindspeed Technologies, Inc., a leading supplier of semiconductor solutions for network infrastructure applications, today announced that it has more than doubled the performance and density of its widely deployed Comcerto media processing SoC solution, while adding key media-processing capabilities. Mindspeed's Comcerto 5000 Series video and voice convergence processor extends the company's flexible and scalable carrier-class voice processing platform, while enabling cable and network operators to better support growing demand for mobile video-based applications and services including videoconferencing, multimedia messaging service (MMS) and dynamic ad insertion.

The Comcerto 5000 M85000 SoC processor builds on seven prior generations of Mindspeed's award-winning multi-core processor expertise. It also extends the company's field-proven production software, which has been used by the world's leading telephone carriers to deploy carrier-grade voice quality across more than 200 million voice ports. The M85000 device combines high-performance/low-power digital signal processing (DSP) technology with flexible packet processing, and includes hardware accelerators for key tasks such as video processing and encryption. The processor's rich set of interface options significantly reduces system cost in high-density, high-throughput, multi-device systems.

The Comcerto 5000 software suite will support more than 20 video and voice codecs and packet protocols for wireline, wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA), CDMA, PacketcableTM and Wideband/HD Voice in a single software image. This same Comcerto 5000 software image also supports H.263, H.264 and MPEG2/4 encode/decode functions, for video trans-rate, trans-size and trans-code applications. Packet-to-TDM and Packet-to-Packet trans-coding operations are simultaneously supported for both voice and video streams. Additional feature support includes Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) encryption, Voice Quality Enhancement, Voice Quality Measurement (RTCP-XR), Echo Cancellation, T.38 fax relay, Announcement Serving, Lawful Interception (CALEA) and much more.

"Our new, flagship Comcerto 5000 processor has been architected with the needs of the world's leading telecommunications carriers, cable and mobile network operators and other service providers in mind," said Kurt Michel, marketing director, carrier media processing, for Mindspeed's multiservice access business unit. "Developers of next-generation multi-service platforms now have a comprehensive SoC solution that sets the industry benchmark for converged, carrier-class media communications processing, while also speeding time to market and reducing system cost."

In addition to delivering field-proven software maturity and rich diagnostics capabilities, the Comcerto 5000 software suite is API-compatible with previous Comcerto designs. This simplifies the task of migrating these designs to higher-performance converged voice and video platforms including next-generation IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) media resource function processing (MRFP) elements, and mobile media gateways.According to Infonetics Research's Mobile Video Equipment, Phones, Services, and Subscribers report released in August 2009, the number of mobile video subscribers reached 41 million worldwide in 2008 and is expected to grow nearly 10-fold by the end of 2013. In addition, according to Infonetics' most recent quarterly IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) report, released in February 2010, IMS equipment which supports the convergence of fixed-line and mobile networks, is experiencing strong and healthy growth, with near-term growth a reflection of continued adoption of VoIP services worldwide and service providers' migration of VoIP services such as mobile IM, video sharing and push-to-talk over cellular (POC).

"The worldwide IMS equipment market more than doubled in 2009, and is expected to grow to $1.44 billion by 2014," said Diane Myers, directing analyst for service provider VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research. "Products like Mindspeed's Comcerto 5000, supporting simultaneous video and voice processing in converged IMS networks, will play a key role in facilitating the deployment of new services." The Comcerto 5000 device samples will be available in May 2010 along with an evaluation board and developer's kit. The device is packaged in a 484-ball, 23mm x 23mm high-performance, flip chip ball grid array (HFCBGA) package. OEM pricing in 10,000-unit production volumes is $275 USD.