Intel and Verizon Collaborate on Industry-Leading vRAN Solution
In a significant milestone for the telecommunications industry, Intel and Verizon have successfully completed the industry’s first data session on Intel’s 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors with Intel® vRAN Boost on Samsung’s virtual radio access network (vRAN) solution. This achievement marks a crucial step towards realizing the full potential of vRAN technology, paving the way for more efficient, scalable, and cost-effective 5G networks.
vRAN is a revolutionary approach to deploying radio access networks (RAN), the critical infrastructure that connects mobile devices to cellular networks. By virtualizing RAN functions onto general-purpose hardware, vRAN offers several advantages over traditional RAN deployments, including:
- Increased flexibility and agility: vRAN enables operators to quickly and easily provision and scale network capacity to meet changing demands.
- Reduced costs: vRAN eliminates the need for specialized hardware, lowering capital and operational expenses.
- Enhanced performance: vRAN can support a wider range of services and applications, including high-bandwidth data and low-latency applications.
Intel’s 4th Gen Xeon processors with Intel vRAN Boost are specifically designed to accelerate vRAN workloads, delivering significant performance and efficiency improvements. Intel vRAN Boost is a suite of hardware and software optimizations that offloads demanding RAN functions from the CPU, freeing up resources for other critical tasks.
First launched at MWC 2023, Intel’s 4th Gen Xeon processors with vRAN Boost are designed for powering high-performance, power-efficient, virtual radio access networks. By fully integrating vRAN acceleration directly into the CPU, Intel has eliminated the need for an external acceleration card — a first for the vRAN market. These new processors also include powerful features that optimize workload performance for packet and signal processing, dynamic power management, as well as integrated acceleration for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications.
“Continued 5G network transformations like this achievement, underpinned by our differentiated design innovations in Xeon, including fully integrated vRAN acceleration, is showcasing the uncompromised benefits of virtualization at scale,” said Dan Rodriguez, corporate vice president and general manager of the Network and Edge Solutions Group at Intel. “Together with Verizon, a pioneer in the industry, and our ecosystem partners, we are enabling a first-of-its-kind high-performance, power-efficient radio access network so that they can deliver even better experiences for their customers.”
Critical functions for disaggregated vRAN solutions, such as enhanced network timing and synchronization, are enabled by the power of Intel’s portfolio when coupling Intel Xeon processors with Intel® Ethernet 800 Series Network Adapters.
The successful data session on Verizon’s commercial network demonstrates the real-world viability of Intel’s vRAN technology. The trial showcased several key benefits, including:
- Meaningful power efficiency gains: The 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors with Intel vRAN Boost consumed up to 30% less power than previous generations.
- Higher workload capacity: The new processors enabled Verizon to handle up to 30% more traffic on the same hardware.
- Improved throughput performance: The trial demonstrated a 20% increase in throughput compared to previous solutions.
These results underscore the potential of Intel’s vRAN technology to revolutionize the telecommunications industry by enabling more efficient, scalable, and cost-effective 5G networks. As vRAN deployments continue to gain traction, Intel and Verizon are committed to collaborating on innovative solutions that will drive the future of wireless connectivity.
