Samsung to Use Lucent Phone-on-a-Chip

Electronic News, Sept 25, 2000

LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES Microelectronics Group, striving to bring Internet telephones to the office, announced that Korea-based Samsung Electronics will use Lucent's DSP-based Internet phone-on-a-chip in the Korean company's Internet telephones. Internet telephones converge voice and data connections on a single Ethernet outlet, eliminating the need for separate cabling for both voice and data.

Offices typically require two cables, one carrying voice and the other data, coming from two separate outlets. Samsung has finished its prototype and is moving its research and development effort toward production stage. The company plans to ship the Internet phones starting next year, primarily to the North American market. Murray Hill, NJ.-based Lucent said it has integrated 13 electronic functions onto a single chip. The DSP integrates a telephone handset analog-to-digital converter, a speakerphone codec, a speaker amplifier, and a microphone amplifier all in one. Lucent's original offering was a two-chip chipset. One chip housed the DSP1627, which is for speakerphone echo cancellation and voice compression. The second chip held ARM's ARM940T microprocessor, which is for voiceover-Internet Protocol signaling and network management.