Host Media Processing
Encyclopedia
Host Media Processing or HMP is a design model in telecommunications systems that involves the use of software solutions to perform voice processing functions where dedicated Digital Signal Processor
s (DSP) were previously required.
In the age of Voice over IP (VoIP), components are connected via Ethernet
or broadband links and use TCP/IP as the transport for voice as well as for data. In this environment, it becomes possible to make voice calls without specialized DSP hardware by instead using PC-based software. This software, or protocol driver functionality is often referred to as Host Media Processing, since it is using the processor in the host PC (e.g. Pentium, Celeron, Sempron, Turion) to do all the telecom work.
HMP can be just software that you load into a PC, though in some situations HMP products work in conjunction with hardware (such as a board equipped with DSP processors) in order to offload computationally expensive operations such as echo cancellation
and transcoding. This allows speech applications to scale
to large numbers of concurrent calls, without bogging down the host CPU.
There are a significant number of voice, speech, conferencing and fax applications that have been written over the last decade. This often means that backward-compatibility is a big issue, since if possible users want the applications to migrate seamlessly to the VoIP environment. This usually means that HMP products expose one or more standard APIs that historically has been used to write telecom apps in the past.
Digital signal processor
A digital signal processor is a specialized microprocessor with an architecture optimized for the fast operational needs of digital signal processing.-Typical characteristics:...
s (DSP) were previously required.
In the age of Voice over IP (VoIP), components are connected via Ethernet
Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
or broadband links and use TCP/IP as the transport for voice as well as for data. In this environment, it becomes possible to make voice calls without specialized DSP hardware by instead using PC-based software. This software, or protocol driver functionality is often referred to as Host Media Processing, since it is using the processor in the host PC (e.g. Pentium, Celeron, Sempron, Turion) to do all the telecom work.
HMP can be just software that you load into a PC, though in some situations HMP products work in conjunction with hardware (such as a board equipped with DSP processors) in order to offload computationally expensive operations such as echo cancellation
Echo cancellation
'The term echo cancellation is used in telephony to describe the process of removing echo from a voice communication in order to improve voice quality on a telephone call...
and transcoding. This allows speech applications to scale
Scalability
In electronics scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process, to handle growing amount of work in a graceful manner or its ability to be enlarged to accommodate that growth...
to large numbers of concurrent calls, without bogging down the host CPU.
There are a significant number of voice, speech, conferencing and fax applications that have been written over the last decade. This often means that backward-compatibility is a big issue, since if possible users want the applications to migrate seamlessly to the VoIP environment. This usually means that HMP products expose one or more standard APIs that historically has been used to write telecom apps in the past.