The move toward open and virtualized networks in the 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) space continues to gain momentum for communications service providers (CSPs). The benefits are many, including the ability to easily build, customize, and manage the network for diverse requirements. vRAN and OpenRAN-based systems also provide a path toward cloud native technology and vendor flexibility when compared to traditional RANs. So, it’s no wonder that a growing number of industry leaders including AMD are offering solutions to support today’s 5G open and virtualized networks.
AMD remains focused on the future of telco as well, with a return to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from Feb 26-28 to showcase numerous demonstrations including 5G Advanced and 6G with AI. This year AMD will also have additional software and solution stack ecosystem partners demonstrating solutions together at the AMD booth in Hall 2, Stand 2M61.
vRAN leadership with Samsung
AMD and Samsung continue their collaboration in telco, this time working together on virtualized RAN solutions driven by AMD EPYC™ processors. This was showcased recently as Samsung and Vodafone conducted an end-to-end call leveraging AMD EPYC CPUs to power Samsung’s Open RAN technology. This industry represented the joint effort across companies to deliver an enhanced Open RAN ecosystem and highly performant solutions for the telco space. Read more about the AMD, Samsung and Vodafone collaboration, here.
Expanding Open RAN Adoption
Parallel Wireless, a leading innovator in the telecom industry, recently announced their GreenRAN™ software platform is now fully CPU agnostic. In the same news release, the company also announced a collaboration with AMD leveraging AMD EPYC 8004 Series processors to revolutionize their Open Ran solutions, showcasing Parallel Wireless’ unique cross-platform capabilities alongside AMD’s performance-per-watt leadership. AMD has a long history of enabling open-, standards-based solutions and will continue to support, along with key ecosystem partners, the adoption of Open RAN standards for a more diverse telco environment.
Breaking New Ground in Telco with 5G and Compute Innovation
4th Gen AMD EPYC processors are being used by Ericsson and Telstra to deliver energy efficiency and modernization for innovative 5G core functions. By powering Ericsson’s Cloud Native Infrastructure Solution (CNIS), in combination with Ericsson’s Packet Core Gateway and Packet Core Controller solutions, AMD EPYC CPUs delivered up to 49% less energy consumption, according to Ericsson.
Napatech and A5G announced a highly performant and energy efficient edge computing platform for 5G networks. The A5G-Napatech platform is powered by AMD EPYC 8004 Series CPUs, which are designed to meet the demands of modern telco edge deployments with high throughput and impressive energy efficiency. Additionally, the Napatech SmartNIC, based on an AMD Virtex™ UltraScale+™ VU9P FPGA, offloads data traffic from the AMD EPYC CPU and enables the A5G packet core to deliver leadership energy efficiency and cost-performance for edge computing applications. Additionally, A5G Networks today announced an industry leading 1.5 Tbps throughput for 5G core UPF leveraging 4th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs. This significant achievement delivers impressive performance at a time of ever-increasing demand for bandwidth on 5G networks.
Dell Technologies recently introduced support for the AMD EPYC 9654P and EPYC 9754 CPUs in the PowerEdge R7615 which will feature NEBS Level 3 Certification for deployments in demanding telco environments. According to Dell, the PowerEdge R7615 simplifies deployments of core services to the cloud by providing the densest telco cloud core solution available on the market today; achieving all this with a single AMD EPYC CPU per server.
As AMD prepares for MWC 2024, it also marks the 2nd year anniversary since the close of its Xilinx acquisition. The combination continues to reveal great synergy as AMD advances its leadership position in telco and networking, expanding its product portfolio from processors for 5G networking, to telco accelerators and adaptive computing SoCs for wireless infrastructure.
AMD Demonstrations at MWC 2024 – Hall 2, Stand 2M61
5G Advanced & 6G AI Integrated on Same Device
5G advanced and 6G wireless communication systems require intensive signal processing and novel artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to be implemented on the same device and AI Engine to achieve latency and throughput requirements. This demo shows the low-PHY of an 8T8R 400MHz radio running side-by-side with an image classifier based on ResNet.
AMD Adaptive 5G vRAN
AMD, together with SRS, VIAVI Solutions, SuperMicro, and iCana, will show an end-to-end O-RAN demonstration, using AMD silicon for both radio and vRAN. SRS has implemented a full software vRAN solution on a SuperMicro IoT A+ AMD EPYC™ 8004 server optimized for Telco applications. The radio (O-RU) is based on Zynq RFSoC DFE and uses the ZCU670 evaluation board together with an RF Front End from iCana. The E2E testing is provided by VIAVI using the TM500 Network Tester for UE Emulation and the TeraVM Core Emulator.
Parallel Wireless GreenRAN™ 5G on EPYC 8004 Series Processors
Parallel Wireless deployed GreenRAN™ 5G DU software on an AMD EPYC™ 8004 Series Processor. The Parallel Wireless deployment offers ease of integration with use of the AMD EPYC 8004 Series for the full RAN stack as well as the AMD T2 Telco Accelerator Card as an FEC accelerator. The solution demonstration includes energy efficiency of AMD EPYC 8004 series predicted with up to 20-50% performance improvement relative to incumbent solutions.
Monetizing AI through Operators
Operators need to accelerate their 5G public and private networks for monetization. AI offers a way to do this through deployment of rich, value-added services and applications. This demonstration shows multi-channel, real time, action and object detection and classification for consumer, retail and smart city applications.