This week, Intel quietly jumped into the WebRTC arena with a SDK and server solution optimized for its hardware. "Chip Shot: Intel Help Create High-Performance Communications Solutions," a company PR blog post announced the launch of the Intel Collaboration Service for WebRTC, or Intel CS for WebRTC.
Intel CS for WebRTC includes a client SDK and server solution. The Intel CS WebRTC Client SDK builds on top of standard WebRTC APIs to accelerate the development of real time communications applications, including broadcast, peer-to-peer communication, and conference modes. Two version of the STK are available, one for Android applications and the other for web applications using JavaScript. The JavaScript SDK supports multiparty conferencing through a MCU server with each conference able to hold up to 16 participants.
Two WebRTC server solutions are available for download. The Intel CS for WebRTC Conference server provides a WebRTC-based video conference service to scale a single WebRTC stream out to many end points. Features include support for high-performance VP8 and H.264 real-time transcoding with Intel Iris pro graphics support, a scalable multipoint control unit (MCU) server, efficient mixing of HD video streams for saving power and bandwidth on mobile devices, and an intelligent Quality of Service (QoS) that adapts to different network environments. Multiple servers can be deployed in a cluster to support heavy workloads, with a controller automatically distributing room sessions among different nodes in the cluster.
The Intel CS for WebRTC Gateway features multiple target RTC systems support --- in other words interoperability between WebRTC and SIP clients -- enables both audio and video channels for different clients' interoperability and the aforementioned intelligent QoS mechanism to adapt to network environments. For legacy compatibility, the gateway supports G.722 audio. It also supports VP8 and H.264 video streams from different communications clients.
All of the software tools and basic documentation are available for free download via Intel at https://software.intel.com/sites/landingpage/webrtc/. Initial comments posted on Intel's support forums indicate that you can't run the MCU conference server or gateway server on a virtual machine because both require Intel Media SDK for media processing. Developers should also be aware that the software is freshly released, with all versions of downloads labeled version 1.0 and documents dated for June 16, 2014.
Stay tuned for more Intel-centric WebRTC support in the months to come. The company wants to encourage the full use of its various hardware features and products as the ARM world makes noises about entering into the data center.
Edited by
Stefania Viscusi
