Digium Releases TCE400B PCI-Express Transcoder Card

Digium today announced the release of the new TCE400B PCI-Express transcoder card for Asterisk. The TCE400B is a half-length, low-profile voice-processing PCI-Express x1 telephony card for use with Asterisk. This product is, essentially, a PCI-Express version of Digium’s existing TC400B product.

The TCE400B provides packet-based codec translation to or from the G.729a (8.0kbit/s) and G.723.1 (5.3/*6.3kbit/s) complex codecs into the G.711 u-law and a-law simple codecs and integrates this capability with Asterisk. Asterisk normally performs all codec translation in software at the expense of CPU time. The TCE400B allows Asterisk to off-load the computational requirements associated with codec translation into dedicated DSP resources, thus freeing the CPU to perform additional call-control or other tasks as directed by Asterisk.

The TCE400B card product utilizes Digium’s wctc4xxp driver file that is part of the DAHDI driver package. Operation of the TCE400B requires a minimum DAHDI release of 2.0.0. Digium always recommends that customers wanting to use the TCE400B use the current (2.2.0) versions instead of the minimum versions. Current versions may include important bug or performance improvements.
The TCE400B also utilizes the codec_dahdi Asterisk module. Operation of the TCE400B, in addition to the above DAHDI requirements, also requires a minimum Asterisk release of 1.4.22 (or later) or 1.6.0.1 (or later). Digium always recommends that customers use the current versions instead of the minimum versions.

The TCE400B is compatible with Open Source Asterisk 1.4.
The TCE400B is compatible with Open Source Asterisk 1.6.
The TCE400B is compatible with Asterisk Business Edition C.X
The TCE400B is not compatible with any current version of Switchvox SMB.
The TCE400B is not compatible with any current version of Switchvox SOHO.
The TCE400B is not compatible with any current version of Switchvox Free.
The TCE400B’s PCI Identifier is d161:8004

The TCE400B does not provide a timing interface like other Digium telephony card products. As such, should you use the TCE400B with an Asterisk application that requires timing, e.g. MeetMe, then Digium recommends use of either another Digium telephony card or the use of the dahdi_dummy software timing device. Note that the release of DAHDI 2.2.0 brings many improvements to dahdi_dummy.