[Asterisk-Users] Hardware Transcoder

[George Pajari]

> I have done a quick search and there are some nice looking
> dsp-pci cards out there. (Dunno abt prices). It may take
> some coding to get them working with Asterisk , and one
> would not require a super-power quad xeon processor if it
> had a huge dsp card.

Perhaps but the fundamental premise upon which the Asterisk/Digium hardware
is predicated is that commodity MIPS (i.e. generic server systems) are much
cheaper than speciality DSP MIPS -- which is why the architecture used by
Asterisk/Digium is to use board that are trivially simple (i.e. merely
interface between the analog/digital trunks and the PCI bus) leaving all the
signal processing to the server CPU. DSPs may be more "efficient" in some
sense but because of the incredible volume of generic servers being shipped
and the competitive pressure on pricing, they turn out to have better
price/performance. DSP boards ship in volumes orders of magnitude smaller
which makes them much more expensive.

If power/density is an issue and you don't need the PCI slots to interface
to digital trunks, take a look at using blade servers.

g.