Octasic (see March 2000 radar) was established in May 1998 to develop ASIC solutions for ATM and IP packetized voice products. In its first 3 years of operation Octasic designed and licensed high-density ATM (AAL1, AAL2, AAL5) and VoIP ASICs for leading semiconductor vendors. Five of these devices have now been commercially released and are used in VoP equipment manufactured by telecom vendors in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Octasic has raised US $500K in equity and US $8.3 M in convertible debentures to date. The company expects to close US $5 million additional equity or debenture financing by the end of the year. Octasic has 60+ employees.

Octasic has now transitioned to a fabless semiconductor vendor focusing on high-density silicon for VoP equipment. Octasic offers specialized co-processors, which perform one or two specific VoP functions such as packetization/aggregation, compression, and echo cancellation, to support high-density VoP systems. Its co-processors are compatible with and interwork with existing DSPs and voice processors.

Octasic’s products fall into 3 major functional categories: packetization/aggregation, compression, and echo cancellation. Packetization sends and receives PCM voice (G.711), for which no additional processing is required, over a packet interface. Aggregation combines the flows of multiple DSP engines in the form of RTP or AAL2 CPS packets in order to fill a higher speed network interface (e.g. OC-3).

Octasic recently introduced its first standard product, the OCT8304 high-density VoIP/ATM packetization and aggregation engine featuring 1000/4000+ channel voice packetization/aggregation capacity, which is claimed to be the highest capacity on the market. The device supports a full OC-3 interface regardless of protocol or packet size mix. It supports 1023 channels of direct G.711 TDM to IP or AAL2 or 4096 channels of compressed RTP/CPS packets over IP/AAL2 with less than 250 usec of latency. The device provides numerous interface options (Ethernet (VoIP), Packet over SONET (VoIP), or ATM (VoAAL2 and AAL5/VoIP)), supports both VoIP and VoATM AAL2, and is designed to interwork with standard DSPs and software.

The device interworks directly with compressed or uncompressed TDM traffic, or combination thereof. The OCT9300 VoP reference design, based on the OCT8304, TI DSPs and Telogy software, supports full OC-3 link capacity with 2016 ADPCM channels and 128ms echo tail on a cPCI card. The OCT8304 is currently completing customer trials and is in production now for US$225 @ 1Ku.

The OCT7102 high-density ADPCM compression chip can compress and decompress up to 255 full duplex audio connections without external components. The device is fully compliant with G.726, features fax/modem detection with automatic compression rate changes, and is H.100/H.110 slave compliant with 4096 time-slot support. The OCT7102 is available now.

According to Octasic, echo cancellation is the most demanding challenge when providing toll quality packet voice. Carriers are demanding the ability to accommodate very long echo tails (128ms). Octasic is currently developing high-density, long tail echo cancellation ICs and plans a product launch in Q1 2002. LSI Logic fabricates Octasics’ chips.

Michel Laurence, Founder, Executive Chairman & acting CEO (most recently the founder, Chairman, and President of InnoMediaLogic)

Serge Fournier, Ph.D., VP of Engineering (previously VP, Internet Communications at Bell-Canada and VP and GM, Network Applications & Services at Nortel)

Lucie Gélinas, Dir. of Finance, Human Resources and Administration

Doug Morrissey, Dir. of Product Marketing (previously Marketing Manager for ATM and DSL products at Lucent Micro)

Fabio Gambacorta, Director of WW Sales (previously Dir. of Bus. Dev, New Network Access at NMS Communications and Dir. of Sales at InnoMedialogic)