By Peter Cohen
Ericsson and Intel announced a new collaboration already underway in Ericsson’s Santa Clara, California facilities called the Ericsson-Intel Tech Hub. It’s there that research and development teams from both organizations are focusing efforts on the energy efficiency and network performance of cloud-based Radio Access Network (RAN) solutions — in this case, Ericsson Cloud RAN software running on Intel hardware.
Presently, work at the Tech Hub is focused on “activities in power management and performance planned this year as well as joint work on Cloud RAN containerized network function (CNF) applications on upcoming generations of processing platforms,” said Ericsson.
Long-term goals for the Tech Hub include developing a roadmap for commercial software releases, reducing time-to-market and monetization, Ericsson said in a statement.
Sustainability and energy efficiency was top of mind for Ericsson in February when it updated its 5G portfolio with seven new RAN products it billed as “sizable energy savings and up to 10-fold capacity increases with minimal or no added footprint.”
The company’s expanded, energy-efficient portfolio was designed for purpose-built and Cloud RAN deployments, according to Ericsson Head of Product Area Networks Per Narvinger.
“We continue to evolve our RAN portfolio with more solutions for smart, slim and sustainable 5G networks,” he said.
Ericsson announced Cloud RAN in 2020. Narvinger said at the time that Cloud RAN would be released incrementally, to enable service providers to incrementally ad capabilities as a complement to their existing purpose-built 5G networks. The companies expect the effort to yield “multi-year product design efforts.”
“We’ve started with our 5G low-band product and then there will be more offerings further down the line, but our sentiment is that it will take our customers time to get ready for this,” he said. “We are announcing this to trigger our customers to get ready for this, even if the actual products won’t be deployed until the end of next year.”
Last June Ericsson extended Cloud RAN to include support for 5G mid-band and massive MIMO deployments. The goal of the new offerings, according to Ericsson, is to help communications service providers (CSPs) “capitalize on 5G spectral assets to roll out services quickly and efficiently, while delivering a more responsive experience to mobile broadband users.”
Ericsson noted that 5G mid-band deployments demand 150 times more compute power than 4G, requiring server-scale hardware like Intel’s Xeon processors to manage the demands. Intel Data Platforms Group EVP and GP Navin Shenoy noted the processor’s success powering cloud data centers.
“Our long-standing partnership with Ericsson is entering an exciting new phase with the shared goal of unleashing richer user experiences with 5G,” he said.
The Tech Hub continues Ericsson’s Cloud RAN evangelization efforts. Ericsson created Open Lab in 2021 to help get customers and ecosystem partners on the Cloud RAN bandwagon. Operators involved include KDDI, Ooredoo, Orange, SoftBank and Turkcell. Other technology partners listed by Ericsson are Intel, NVIDIA, Red Hat and Wind River. The lab is accessible both physically in Ottawa, Canada and virtually.
In a statement, Ericsson EVP and Head of Business Area Networks Fredrik Jejdling described the goal as “develop[ing] architectures and common operating standards that complement existing 5G ready technology. This initiative will help to test the limits of 5G connectivity, working closely with operators and enterprise customers globally, as the industry continues to adopt more open architectures.”
