Today, Intel launched the 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors with Intel vRAN Boost, delivering 2 times the capacity gains gen over gen within the same power envelope and up to an additional 20% power savings with integrated acceleration, meeting critical performance, scaling, and energy efficiency requirements.

Developed in collaboration with SK Telecom, Intel announced the Intel® Infrastructure Power Manager for 5G core reference software, which provides a 30% average run-time3 CPU power savings. Intel announced a breakthrough performance by demonstrating the industry’s-first 1 terabit per second4 (Tbps) 5G user plane function (UPF) workload performance on 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors.

vRAN is Here and Nearly All Deployments Run on Intel

The need for high-performance, scalable, flexible, and energy-efficient systems is driving the transformation of mobile networks from fixed-function, hardware-based silicon, and infrastructure to software-based, fully virtualized platforms running on general-purpose processors. Accelerating the virtualization of the RAN positions communications service providers (CoSPs) to meet future requirements while improving RAN energy efficiency and reducing their total cost of ownership (TCO).

5G Core Networks Run on Software, Delivering Cloud-Native Agility

At the core of the network, Intel is leading the evolution to cloud-native, service-based architectures with open solutions for addressing challenges like performance, TCO, power efficiency, security, and lack of visibility across the network stack. Intel’s hardware and software solutions will enable 5G core networks to work harder and smarter at achieving a balance between critical business and customer requirements for power efficiency, performance, and latency.

Intel is Setting the Pace at the Edge

Massive growth at the network edge, largely in video services, will define much of this decade’s competitive landscape for service providers. The operators’ network edge facilities position them for a competitive advantage to deliver this growth, yet it’s challenging to predict which specific video services will take off.

Alongside partners Broadpeak, China Mobile, Cloudsky, Thundersoft, and ZTE, Intel showcased the Intel Converged Edge Media Platform, which delivers multiple video services from a shared, multitenant architecture and leverages cloud-native scalability to intelligently respond to shifting requirements.

Delivering Customer Choice in Acceleration

Alongside the integrated network acceleration built into 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Intel is expanding its Agilex 7 FPGAs and eASIC N5X structure ASIC devices for cloud, communications and embedded applications.

As cloud service providers (CSPs) begin transitioning from 200G to 400G networks in 2023, with CoSPs to follow suit in 2024, Intel Agilex 7 FPGA AGI 041 devices will enable next-generation 400G infrastructure acceleration solutions. AGI 041 devices deliver the right balance of capacity, power efficiency and performance for the 400G Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU) and networking solutions.