Telecom and networking applications are often provided as vertically integrated solutions, where a vendor optimizes the overall solution for the purpose of maximizing performance and delivering optimal power efficiency. Specialized hardware and software tailored for the task at hand has been the mainstay. This has often taken the form of purpose built hardware based on a proprietary or Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) form factor. With the introduction of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) many network functions have been targeted for virtualization. The Session Border Controller (SBC) is an example of this type application.

At a high level, an SBC functions to provide a firewall and Network Address Translation (NAT) for VoIP interconnections. There are many other functions associated with SBC; one of them being transcoding of VoIP connections. In today’s networks SBCs are often combined in the same purpose built hardware platform with a transcoding function. In this case the norm is that a bulk of the processing is done by an x86 device and the transcoding of the VoIP connections is accomplished by DSP technology.