Ericsson, Intel, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have successfully demonstrated Ericsson’s Cloud RAN solution on the new 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors with Intel vRAN Boost. This milestone marks a significant step towards a fully commercialized Cloud RAN solution based on HPE ProLiant DL110 servers, which will help communications service providers increase network capacity and energy efficiency while gaining greater flexibility and scalability.

Ericsson Cloud RAN is the industry’s first virtualized RAN solution to be successfully demonstrated and ready to deploy on the new 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors with Intel vRAN Boost. The collaborative effort shows commitment from the companies to speed up the availability of new technological improvements to the market and is a testament to their strong partnership.

The technology milestone comes at a timely moment, with increasing interest in virtualization and cloud native technologies in 5G RAN and beyond. Carried out at Ericsson’s Open Lab in Ottawa, the first end-to-end Cloud RAN call on 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors with Intel vRAN Boost on the HPE ProLiant DL110 server, marks a significant step forward in helping service providers meet the diverse needs for more open, resilient, sustainable, and intelligent mobile networks.

David Hammarwall, Head of Product Area Networks, at Ericsson, says: “This achievement shows our commitment to driving Open RAN forward, with our high-performing Cloud RAN solution and extensive support of the larger ecosystem. Working with partners like Intel and HPE, we are actively promoting open standards and delivering intelligent and sustainable solutions for future networks.”

“It is also a testament to the strong partnership between our companies, as we have worked closely to test pre-released technology and interoperability,” Hammarwall adds. “It brings us a step closer to meeting our goal of faster time-to- market and high-quality offerings for customers to deliver high-performing Cloud RAN networks.”

Dan Rodriguez, Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Network and Edge Solutions Group, at Intel, says: “Achieving this significant milestone with Ericsson and HPE is possible only through open industry collaboration. Strong ecosystem engagements like this are absolutely critical to drive global innovation and commercial deployments at scale. Virtualization of the RAN is the next major transformation as we work to advance mobile networks into the future.”

Phil Cutrone, SVP and GM, Service Providers, OEM, and Telco at HPE, says: “We’re excited to work with Ericsson and Intel to advance Open RAN innovation for operators and enterprises, with the promise of increased network capacity, energy efficiency, flexibility and scalability. The HPE ProLiant DL110 Cloud RAN optimized server provides Ericsson and our joint telco customers with the ideal platform to deploy Cloud RAN technology while also addressing telco challenges with respect to power and performance.”

Ericsson, Intel, and HPE collaboration

The collaboration between Ericsson, Intel, and HPE is ongoing at development labs globally, including the Open Lab in Ottawa, and at the joint Ericsson – Intel Tech Hub in Santa Clara, California.

Radio access networks (RAN) come with a unique set of requirements, especially the extreme demand on processing in the compute platform of Cloud RAN. To address these processing needs, acceleration technology is required, like those found in the latest Gen Intel Xeon processors. The 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors with Intel vRAN Boost is a highly integrated solution for powering such Cloud RAN networks. These processors include advanced features that optimize workload performance for packet and signal processing, load balancing, AI and machine learning, and the implementation of dynamic power management.

The HPE ProLiant DL110 server is workload optimized for edge applications that require low power, high bandwidth, and low latency such as 5G cellular processing (vRAN.)  In addition, the server is open and standards compliant. It is a carrier-grade infrastructure that offers dense I/O capabilities with PCI2 Gen4 speed, acceleration, and powerful compute driven by 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors.