Re: [Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
My thoughts on a DS3 * box: Forget PCI. Forget x86. There are very good bsd and linux ports for the powerpc. There are ppc's with very good TDM interfaces. All these framers and dsps speak TDM. Very simple clean design. If you do not want to build any hardware, you can probably find something off the self. You can always use an eval board from IBM or Moto. Any expensive but easy way to start. The only pain would be the * port. Yet more ifdef's. OK, that is a different rant. -- Bob Knight [-w] the work option [EMAIL PROTECTED] 925-449-9163 ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
On Sunday 06 June 2004 13:10, Bob Knight wrote: The only pain would be the * port. Yet more ifdef's. OK, that is a different rant. You could always just do TDMoE to an x86 running *... I bet TDMoE would be a LOT easier to port than all of *. :-) -A. ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
If I recall correctly, * and zaptel compiles on the powerpc chip... no porting needed. Andrew Kohlsmith wrote: On Sunday 06 June 2004 13:10, Bob Knight wrote: The only pain would be the * port. Yet more ifdef's. OK, that is a different rant. You could always just do TDMoE to an x86 running *... I bet TDMoE would be a LOT easier to port than all of *. :-) -A. ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
Hi, Bob Knight wrote: My thoughts on a DS3 * box: Forget PCI. Forget x86. There are very good bsd and linux ports for the powerpc. There are ppc's with very good TDM interfaces. All these framers and dsps speak TDM. Very simple clean design. If you do not want to build any hardware, you can probably find something off the self. You can always use an eval board from IBM or Moto. Any expensive but easy way to start. The only pain would be the * port. Yet more ifdef's. OK, that is a different rant. This seems to create a number of fresh problems, but you haven't identified a major problem your idea solves. The TDM to x86 interface is no big deal. Its all the DSP load which creates problems. A better solution is to add an H.100 interface to the E1/T1/DS3/OC-48 cards. Many of the DSP cards also have H.100 interfaces, and could talk directly to such an interface card. Just avoid the data ever getting near the main CPUs until after the DSPs have done their work, and the data is compressed into a slower stream. Regards, Steve ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
John Todd wrote: [...] There have been discussions here on this list already on the availability of boards like SBEI's channelized DS-3 card (they've been a reasonably approachable vendor.) Do they make such a thing? The DS3 cards on their site appear to be HDLC data only. Regards, Steve ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
Ouch. The 64-port Ai-Logix board goes for (!) $3559 USD. Who is _paying_ for this stuff?!? That's 5x multiplier on what I pay for Asterisk, including the $10 per channel G.729 license. I will say that I'm looking for a good, dense DSP card that can be bodged into Asterisk. I have a line on a DS-3 card that has Linux drivers (channelized to DS-0 level) and I really want to run a DS-3's worth of G.729 or iLBC calls out of a single dual-proc 1u machine, just to say it's been done. However, that is impossible without echo cancellation and offboard DSP's to handle the real number crunching... I've done computations with costs based on RLX blade servers doing transcoding after offload via TDMoE, and it's still pretty pricey to get a DS-3's worth of calls - still in the $25,000-$35,000 range, depending on how you count equipment. That's not to mention the development of the DS-3 interface software... If anyone knows of a good DSP PCI card that could be put to use for G.729/iLBC/GSM/G.726 transcoding, let me know. Never heard about using the GPU to do anything useful. Sounds interesting. Got links? Commetrix: only seems to have a board capable of ~30 high-complexity channels Bittware: maybe. Website not immediately clear. Signalogic: http://www.signalogic.com/index.pl?page=sigc67xx_pci maybe. Aculab: http://www.aculab.com/products/dna/ip_telephony_card.htm only 60 channels. There are about a zillion companies out there selling CompactPCI solutions; someone MUST have a decent generic DSP board on standard PCI that can handle 672 high-complexity calls... JT At 9:42 PM +0800 on 6/3/04, Leo Ann Boon wrote: Heard good things about this card from some of my associates. quite expensive though http://www.ai-logix.com/smartdsp_vr_1.html A wild idea, why not use the graphics card GPU to do the compression? I understand there're some work on using the GPU to do SIMD. Supposed to be faster than the P4 and definitely cheaper than a dedicated dsp board Miroslav Nachev wrote: Hi, I would like to find some way for hardware coding instead software (using the Host CPU). Are there any PCI boards just with codecs (DSP) or other way? Best Regards, Miroslav Nachev [silly .sig snipped] ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
Ouch. The 64-port Ai-Logix board goes for (!) $3559 USD. Who is _paying_ for this stuff?!? Quite a lot of people. I know of at least 1 brand of voice logger that use these boards for real-time compression. It was pretty much necessary considering that some of those loggers were built on 486,586 back-planes. snip Never heard about using the GPU to do anything useful. Sounds interesting. Got links? Take a look at brookgpu, http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/brookgpu/index.html. It's a compiler for Brook (C with streams) for nvidia,ati GPUs. According to one of the PPT on the site, it's possible to get 2-3x speed up over the CPU. snip -Leo ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
..And I'd like a time machine, and a supercomputer, and a submarine too... I think you are way-over ambitious for a 1RU space. Heat, noise, all the bad things computers do get worse in confined spaces. Perhaps Cray, or someone will come out with a 1RU supercomputer soon. But I'd not hold my breath. Even the telco's breakout of a DS-3 takes more space than you think. How would you troubleshoot one DS0? (Very carefully I'd imagine) I guess we can wish however... (I can all ready imagine the Inermod/crosstalk, RFI of all those DSP's crammed into a confined space..brrr) I know you're wishing, maybe you'll hit the lottery too, and start designing boards to do exactly that...(grin) WE can wish too;) Marc I will say that I'm looking for a good, dense DSP card that can be bodged into Asterisk. I have a line on a DS-3 card that has Linux drivers (channelized to DS-0 level) and I really want to run a DS-3's worth of G.729 or iLBC calls out of a single dual-proc 1u machine, just to say it's been done. However, that is impossible without echo cancellation and offboard DSP's to handle the real number crunching... ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
Even the telco's breakout of a DS-3 takes more space than you think. How would you troubleshoot one DS0? (Very carefully I'd imagine) In software, naturally. A physical DS0 needn't exist. (I can all ready imagine the Inermod/crosstalk, RFI of all those DSP's crammed into a confined space..brrr) Why would you do something that crazy? You could put 8 high-end DSPs on a half-height PCI card and have each one handle a DS2's worth of channels (up to 96) and then have the 8th do general housekeeping of the entire DS3 and PCI interface. Why would you use one DSP per channel? -A. ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
But even at that rate, that box is going to be mighty busy... Why would you do something that crazy? You could put 8 high-end DSPs on a half-height PCI card and have each one handle a DS2's worth of channels (up to 96) and then have the 8th do general housekeeping of the entire DS3 and PCI interface. Why would you use one DSP per channel? -A. ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
At 10:19 PM -0400 on 6/5/04, Andrew Kohlsmith wrote:
Even the telco's breakout of a DS-3 takes more space than you think.
How would you troubleshoot one DS0? (Very carefully I'd imagine)
In software, naturally. A physical DS0 needn't exist.
(I can all ready imagine the Inermod/crosstalk, RFI of all those DSP's
crammed into a confined space..brrr)
Why would you do something that crazy? You could put 8 high-end DSPs on a
half-height PCI card and have each one handle a DS2's worth of channels (up
to 96) and then have the 8th do general housekeeping of the entire DS3 and
PCI interface. Why would you use one DSP per channel?
-A.
Andrew's points are correct.
There exist already cards that will do this, that are even PCI (CPCI,
though.) They tend to be crazy expensive despite relatively
inexpensive parts, as has already been noted. They also tend to be
surrounded in marketing gobbledy-gook that makes it impossible to
determine the true capabilities of the equipment without getting a
'sales engineer' to cut through the BS and tell you what the card
actually does. And as a last nail in the coffin, typically these
boards are part of larger architectures which are impossible to
purchase in individually useful or programmable components. (OH!
You want the SOFTWARE LICENSE, then, as well! That's a separate
contract and price sheet!)
We here in the Asterisk community sometimes fail to see the larger
possibilities that surround us, and focus only on what the hobbyist
or single IT person working alone can afford and understand. The
telephony hardware market is huge, and has an impressive array of
vendors producing some really nice cards. Alas, most of them are
overpriced because of the niche nature of some of this gear - if you
spend $300,000 developing the hardware, software, and certifications
for a card then you can't charge $750 for it, even though that might
be the cost of the chips and manufacturing.
We (the * community) have this single-minded focus because of the
items I mention in paragraph 1. If it's too difficult to understand,
purchase, or if it's too much money to afford experimentation, we
won't use it. That's a shame, since I think there could be some
really cool parallel-CPU stuff done with third party cards
(encryption, transcoding, echo cancellation, faxing) if they became
more available and approachable by the open-source community. Look
at the neat stuff that OpenBSD does with the PCI-based encryption
cards.
I expect a DS-3's worth of physical and transcoding traffic can be
pushed through a PCI bus machine and into Asterisk, if the
appropriate amount of 'real' development was put towards the effort.
('real' in this context equals a team of developers working full
time, for money.) I have some doubts if it could be marketed and
sold in a cost-effective manner by anyone other than Digium at this
point, though, so it's a moot point.
There have been discussions here on this list already on the
availability of boards like SBEI's channelized DS-3 card (they've
been a reasonably approachable vendor.) All that we need is what
Andrew describes (a few high-end DSP's on a card) and the software
extensions to glue all of that into Asterisk. Markets exist for such
a combination(I know - I've been in three firms now that would have
bought such a system) but the real revenues are out there in the land
of slick salespeople and big trade show booths, which jack up the
prices out of the range where anyone running Asterisk would be
interested. I think if that could be delivered for $5000 (not
including the PC) then there would be some buyers. Compare against
buying a used (not new) Cisco DS-3 card for a 58xx or a Quintum or a
Nuera with the same capacity. I will say that the big problem with
this whole discussion is that when you reach DS-3 levels, running PRI
just isn't elegant (but certain it's possible.) Implementing SS7 on
Asterisk is a much larger issue, and more fraught with danger. That
being said, I can also get M-13 DS3-to-T1 muxes pretty cheap these
days, so just the space savings of a DS3 into a single Asterisk box
still makes it look appealing versus a slew of PRI's and associated
card madness.
I don't expect any real comments to come out of this post, and I'm
uncertain why I even made it. The people reading this list (you know
who you are - Hi, guys!) who have an interest in high-density
Asterisk installations have not and will not ever post to this list
directly. There are dozens of companies in this situation (ssh!
It's a secret that they run Asterisk! What embarrassment that an
RBOC was using gasp OPEN SOURCE!) and it's a shame that this type
of platform will not be developed due to everyone's reluctance to
practice what they preach with open source information.
Anyone want to fund an egg or a chicken?
JT
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[Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
Hi, I would like to find some way for hardware coding instead software (using the Host CPU). Are there any PCI boards just with codecs (DSP) or other way? Best Regards, Miroslav Nachev COSMOS Software Enterprises, Ltd. Tel:(+359-2) 983-32-62 Mobile: (+359-88) 897-31-95 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.space-comm.com Post address: P. O. Box 941, 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria Office address: ap. 9, fl. 4, 11 August str., No. 43, 1202 Sofia, Bulgaria ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] DSP Coding
Heard good things about this card from some of my associates. quite expensive though http://www.ai-logix.com/smartdsp_vr_1.html A wild idea, why not use the graphics card GPU to do the compression? I understand there're some work on using the GPU to do SIMD. Supposed to be faster than the P4 and definitely cheaper than a dedicated dsp board Miroslav Nachev wrote: Hi, I would like to find some way for hardware coding instead software (using the Host CPU). Are there any PCI boards just with codecs (DSP) or other way? Best Regards, Miroslav Nachev COSMOS Software Enterprises, Ltd. Tel:(+359-2) 983-32-62 Mobile: (+359-88) 897-31-95 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.space-comm.com Post address: P. O. Box 941, 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria Office address: ap. 9, fl. 4, 11 August str., No. 43, 1202 Sofia, Bulgaria ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
