Though this year’s Mobile World Congress trade show is expected to be a thoroughly modest affair, it’s clear that many companies in the telecom industry are still using the convention’s time frame to make important announcements. What’s particularly interesting is the range of news related to network infrastructure equipment, the chips that power that equipment, and the software-based transformation of this often arcane, little understood world of network infrastructure.
Intel kicked things off with an event it dubbed Edge of Wonderful, during which the company described the ongoing evolution of 5G networks and the possibilities for powering critical edge computing applications. As part of the bigger picture discussion, Intel also unveiled a number of specific new products targeted at enabling some of these new capabilities. The latest addition to its Agilex line of FPGA chips accelerates cryptography for keeping data encrypted over 5G networks, and a new Synchronous Ethernet (SyncE) network card, part of the company’s Ethernet 800 Series, is designed for timing sensitive network applications.
Intel also announced several software-based offerings, including a new software architecture, called the Intel Network Platform, to help service providers and network equipment makers leverage the full capabilities of the company’s various silicon and software components. Consisting of software drivers, building blocks, blueprints and reference architectures, the Intel Network Platform is designed to make the transition to a more software-defined network infrastructure easier to achieve. Intel Smart Edge is a new combination of two existing software components (one of which was previously called OpenNESS) that’s designed to ease the creation of software for applications like private networks and edge computing. Though it’s essentially a suite of developer tools, the goal is to jump start the kinds of advanced applications for 5G that we were originally promised—e.g., smart factories, new cloud-based services, etc.—but which have been slow to arrive.
Intel and Ericsson also came together in an Ericsson announcement about the expansion of their Cloud RAN offerings, specifically for mid-band spectrum (see “CBRS Vs. C-Band: Making Sense Of Mid-Band 5G” for more). One interesting factoid that came out of the announcement is that a mid-band 5G deployment apparently takes 150x more compute power than 4G and requires response times that are twice as fast. Not surprisingly, that puts significant strain on the computing infrastructure necessary to power that work, which is the reason Ericsson said it chose to leverage Intel’s latest Xeon Scalable server CPUs and specialized accelerators for the effort.
For Ericsson’s part, the new effort is an extension of its software-based virtualized RAN tools that are designed to accommodate a more flexible array of physical radios and network architectures. While this is part of the company’s growing efforts to transition to a cloud native software-based network infrastructure world, it also works in conjunction with Ericsson Cloud Link, which enables the software-defined Cloud RAN to interconnect and co-exist with the large base of existing Ericsson hardware-based purpose-built networks. For most existing telco providers around the world, this real-world scenario, sometimes referred to as “blue-field,” is what they’ll be facing for many years to come.
Finally, as part of an event that the company called Samsung Networks: Redefined, Samsung unveiled some key new silicon components and network infrastructure equipment designed to enhance the coverage of 5G networks. The event provided a fast hitting, impressive overview of all the work the company’s network division has been doing for 5G, including advancement in 5G modems, virtualized infrastructure, software, small cells, mmWave, and more. The company even used the event to tease some of the advanced R&D work that it is currently doing for 6G.
As for the here and now, Samsung Networks specifically made two new product announcements at the event, both of which are expected to enable 5G network infrastructure advances for 2022. First, the company unveiled a series of new chips that meet the requirements of the 3GPP’s Release 16 Document (see “Look Out, Here Comes 5G, Phase 2” for more). The third generation mmWave RFIC, second generation 5G modem SOC, and a new version of its DFE-RFIC (Digital Front End/Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit) are specifically designed for network infrastructure equipment. Samsung plans to use them in its own branded network equipment, including Massive MIMO radios, Compact Macro Cells, and next generation baseband devices. In particular, the chips offer support for a wider range of mmWave and sub-6 frequencies with faster throughput, and they do so with less power, enabling the creation of smaller, lower power, yet faster 5G network installations.
In a similar vein, the company’s second announcement was for its One Antenna Radio, which combines a mid-band Massive MIMO radio with traditional passive antennas for frequencies below 3 GHz. The result is a physically smaller, easier to install, consolidated solution that reduces operational costs for telco carriers.
Individually, each of the announcements from these different vendors are arguably relatively modest, but collectively they represent another important step towards the 5G network transformation that began several years back. The simple truth is that the process of fully building out the infrastructure necessary to power 5G networks, and the capabilities they enable, is a relatively long one. As a result, announcements like these are a critical part of the progress necessary to move 5G forward.
Disclosure: TECHnalysis Research is a tech industry market research and consulting firm and, like all companies in that field, works with many technology vendors as clients, some of whom may be listed in this article.
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June 23, 2021 at 07:00PM
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Samsung Networks, Intel And Ericsson Driving 5G Network Transformation Efforts - Forbes
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