By Oystein Bergmann, Bureau Chief, Scandinavia

A leading provider of programmable Smart Network Interface Cards (SmartNICs) and Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs) used in cloud, enterprise and telecom datacenter networks, Napatech™ has  announced the availability of its 5G User Plane Function (UPF) offload solution on the new Napatech NT400D13 SmartNIC which leverages Altera’s Agilex™ 7 FPGA.

Unlike most 4G networks based on purpose-built appliances, the 5G packet core is implemented as virtualized or cloud-native software running on servers located within edge and core data centers. As Communications Service Providers (CSPs) and enterprises scale up the deployments of their telecom infrastructure and private networks, they face strong financial pressure to maximize the number of users that can be supported on each server while also minimizing the energy consumption of their edge data centers.

Within the 5G packet core, the UPF subsystem represents the highest compute workload, performing critical packet inspection, routing and forwarding functions. Since general-purpose server CPUs are not well suited to the performance requirements of real-time packet processing, 5G core vendors increasingly offload the UPF to accelerator cards optimized for executing this workload. To support this strategy, Napatech provides an integrated hardware/software solution that comprises a fully-offloaded UPF data plane running on its programmable SmartNICs.

The Napatech NT400D13 SmartNIC maximizes the performance of UPF offload, processing up to 185 million concurrent flows with a flow learning rate greater than 3 million flows per second, achieving a total throughput of up to 297 million packets per second (stateless operation) and ensuring full 2x 100G wire speed operation with end-to-end latency under 4 microseconds. This represents a performance improvement of up to 60% compared to the NT200A02 platform on which the Napatech UPF offload solution was first introduced.

Napatech’s UPF offload solution is supported by an ecosystem of 5G core software suppliers and server OEMs, with partners such as A5G Networks, Advantech, Amantya Technologies, Druid Software, HyperBlox, Kontron, Lanner Electronics, Lenovo, Saviah Technologies, Supermicro and Truminds having already announced products that leverage this technology. Additional partners have integrations in progress and/or planned, to be announced in due course.

“Data from Heavy Reading’s 2024 5G Network Strategies Operator Survey: Powering 5G Networks indicates that applications using hardware accelerators will contribute the most to 5G core performance and power efficiency targets. That’s why these accelerators lead the scoring for Rank 1,” said Principal Analyst for Mobile Networks at Heavy Reading Ruth Brown. “Offloading the UPF data plane to a SmartNIC can help operators meet these targets by minimizing the number of servers required to support user traffic within the core.”

“Launching UPF offload on the NT400D13 SmartNIC extends the business-level benefits that our ecosystem partners can deliver to network operators”, said Senior Director of Business Development at Napatech Charlie Ashton. “In a representative Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) use case that we analyzed, the performance of the NT400D13 enabled an operator to support 22 times as many users per server than with a software-based UPF, leading to reductions of 95 per cent in power consumption, 92 per cent  in CAPEX and 95 per cent in OPEX for the edge data center.”

“We are delighted to see Napatech introduce their UPF offload on the NT400D13 SmartNIC,” said Vice President and General Manager at Altera, an Intel company Mike Fitton. “The Agilex™ AGF022 F-Tile FPGA delivers high performance and power efficiency for the most demanding applications, helping to ensure that Napatech’s partners and customers can deliver leading solutions for telecom infrastructure and private networks.”