Accord to replace MGC platform

[ladle]

Interesting rumor. Polycom is to end of life the MGC platform in Q4 this year and replace it with a SW based MCU.

This will allow lower priced PC architecture HW to be used. Of course PLCM already has a very experienced PC engineering teams in Andover, who since the demise of the iPower range are now being employed to produce this new platform.

If it is true and I stress it's a rumor it's a brave move by Polycom.

Guess they are looking to produce bridge ports for $100's per port rather than $2.5k-$3.0k.

Can anyone confirm this, or is it all nonsense ??

[Glen Sykes]

I would seriously doubt you'll get confirmation of something as speculative as this.

From my personal opinion, I would say that this would have to be false though, given the recent introduction of the MGC 25 platform, the Video+ and Audio+ cards, and the processing demands of the more advanced algorithms in an MCU environment would make this move extremely unlikely.

The rumour may have stemmed from a recent change in the management unit on the MGC50 and 100, where the OS was recently upgraded to WinXP.

My guess is there's some life in the old chassis yet.

As for lowering the cost per port, I'd say that this is only really going to happen through increased port densities due to advances in processing technology. Moving to a PC based platform at this stage in the markets development would be a retrograde step.

[christensendl]

They announced a new IP board, a new MUX board, higher density audio and video boards, H.264 and AES are coming.

No, it is very much alive.