Emerson Network Power media processing accelerator offers performance breakthrough in server apps

HONG KONG: Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson and the global leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity, announced a performance breakthrough for adding voice and video to network server applications.

Where a typical commercial Host Media Processing solution is limited to 2000 ports per server, a single Emerson Network Power PCIE-8120 PCI Express media processing acceleration card is capable of transcoding over 7000 bidirectional voice channels from G.711 to G.729A, and multiple cards can be added to a single server for even higher performance.

Featuring up to 12 low power Octasic digital signal processors (DSPs) with embedded voice or video firmware, the Emerson Network Power PCIEe-8120 can also transcode over 300 mobile video streams at CIF resolution, and offers support for high definition video resolutions up to 1080p.

It enables users to add high density, highly scalable voice and video processing to network applications, while using less space, less power and at lower cost than the alternative of adding more servers or suffering significantly reduced application performance.

High density voice and video processing is increasingly in demand for applications such as session border controllers, media gateways/servers or media resource functions, video or content optimization, video communications servers, and interactive voice and video response systems.

A new white paper, published by Emerson Network Power, outlines the trends driving the need for network media processing with specific application examples. The PCIE-8120 is designed for NEBS carrier grade and data center environments, depending on the server enclosure, and so offers a common solution for both enterprise and telecom environments.

In addition, since Emerson Network Power’s ATCA-8320 is based on the same technology, this allows OEMs to achieve even higher scalability up to multi-bladed AdvancedTCA systems while protecting software investment.

“The opportunity enabled by Emerson Network Power’s innovative solution is a break from a conventional rack-and-stack model, where price-per-port is typically quite stable, because adding these high performance media processing cards to rack mount servers can significantly bring down the price-per-port,” said Rob Pettigrew, marketing director for Emerson Network Power’s Embedded Computing business. “When you factor in the improved scalability and future-proofing it offers a more straightforward deployment experience.”

Emerson Network Power is testing the PCIE-8120 in a variety of rack mount servers and publishing application notes to simplify the installation and use in these systems.

In addition to offering the PCIE-8120 as scalable individual boards, Emerson Network Power’s global network of channel partners will offer integrated platforms to help accelerate customers’ time-to-market and provide a complete application-ready solution.