Intel launched at Mobile World Congress its FPGA Programmable Acceleration Card for 5G networks. The N3000 accelerates many virtualized workloads, ranging from 5G radio access networks to core network applications, the chipmaker said. Intel also announced that Ericsson is adopting its new SoC for mobile base stations and it's working with Skyworks and gateway manufacturers on integration of its 5G modem, with the first products available for testing by year-end.
The card is designed for communications service providers to enable 5G next-generation core and virtualized radio access networks, offering programmability and flexibility with the performance, power efficiency, density and system integration capabilities the market needs to support the full capabilities of 5G networks.
The highly customizable platform enables high throughput, lower latency and high-bandwidth applications. It allows for optimization of data plane performance to achieve lower costs while maintaining a high degree of flexibility, Intel said. Support of end-to end industry standard and open source tools allows users to adapt quickly to evolving workloads and standards.
The N3000 for networking is designed to accelerate network traffic for up to 100 Gbps and supports up to 9GB DDR4 and 144MB QDR IV memory for high-performance applications. Programmability and flexibility of an FPGA allow customers to create tailored solutions by utilizing reference IPs for networking function acceleration workloads such as vRAN, vBNG, vEPC, IPSec and VPP.
Affirmed Networks, Rakuten first customers
Affirmed Networks used Intel’s FPGA PAC to develop a new solution for 5G core network/evolved packet core, offering what it claims is the first true 200 Gbps/server. Intel FPGAs for smart load balancing and CPU cache optimizations enhance software performance. They also provide lower power consumption and lower latency for diverse quality of service characteristics across multiple network slices for 5G. Affirmed Networks' 5G core network will be demonstrated in the Intel booth at MWC.
Japan's Rakuten is including Intel x86 and FPGA-based PAC for acceleration from the core to the edge to provide the first end-to-end cloud-native mobile network. Intel FPGA PAC N3000 is the distributed unit accelerator next to Intel Xeon Scalable processor where Layer 1 functions, such as forward error correction and front haul transmission, are offloaded onto an Intel FPGA. The Intel FPGA accelerates processing efficiency to improve and support user capacity, as well as reduce system cost and provide more security in the radio network.
Ericsson adopts Snow Ridge
Intel is also showing in Barcelona Snow Ridge 10nm system-on-chip for wireless base stations, which was unveiled last month at CES. Intel announced at MWC that Ericsson is adopting Intel’s Snow Ridge silicon to further evolve its 5G base station product lines. Ericsson is using Snow Ridge as a component along with its custom silicon. Intel said it expects to be in production on Snow Ridge in the second half of this year.
The company will also soon launch the next Intel Xeon Scalable platform family member, Cascade Lake. This is expected to enable telecommunications service providers to seize new cloud and network opportunities and optimize their data centre, core and edge environments to meet growing computing, artificial intelligence and storage demands. Intel will provide more details on the product as it nears launch.
5G modem products ready by year-end
On the handset front, Intel announced a collaboration with Skyworks to optimize the multimode 5G radio frequency components for the Intel XMM 8160 5G modem. The platform, including RF front end, will be available in Q4 2018 for product certification purposes at select customers, with broad availability targeted for the first quarter of 2020.
Additionally, Fibocom, a manufacturer of cellular M.2 modules, is announcing that it will integrate the Intel XMM 8160 5G modem. In support of this news, gateway manufacturing vendors D-Link, Arcadyan, Gemtek and VVDN announced they are adopting the Intel XMM 7560 gigabit LTE modem for their gateways, with upgrade plans to move to the Intel XMM 8160 5G modem in early 2020.
