Latest chip from Marvell simplifies transition to cloud-native RAN
“The easiest way to migrate from traditional to cloud-native RAN is to use the same proven silicon and software for both,” says Marvell
With Mobile World Congress Barcelona less than a week away, RCR Wireless News caught up with Peter Carson, Marvell’s Senior Director of Solutions Marketing, for a look at what to expect from Marvell at this year’s show.
The biggest news is the latest addition to Marvell’s OCTEON 10 family of processors: the OCTEON 10 Fusion Baseband Platform. “[The platform] supports use cases from the RU [radio units] to YOU [distributed units] for both integrated – what some people call traditional – RAN architecture and open, virtualized RAN,” said Carson, adding that the company already works with big names like Nokia, Samsung, Dell and Fujitsu, as well as leading cloud software vendors works together.
For O-RAN RUs, the OCTEON 10 Fusion processor features specialized accelerators optimized to process complex 5G Massive MIMO beamforming algorithms. The platform is also the world’s first 5-nanometer baseband solution, which Carson says offers improved performance and power efficiency, a key improvement as radio complexity and power demands continue to increase. To reduce time to market for developers, the company has worked with Analog Devices to develop an RU reference design using the OCTEON 10 Fusion chip that supports 32T32R antennas with 400MHz operating bandwidth and 300MHz instantaneous bandwidth, resulting in savings of up to 40% enables energy consumption.
According to Carson, the new unified platform will serve existing customers as they migrate to more advanced features and better performance and performance. He also claimed that it offers what transport companies really ask for. “[It] indeed delivers an open, scalable, cloud-native RAN that meets the performance of existing and established networks,” he said, adding that this is a “critical requirement” as the transition to an open architecture will take several years. “Cloud-native RAN will not happen overnight,” he noted. “This is about [delivering performance that] enables new, improved services that are the growth engine for 5G innovations; It’s about [enabling] new enterprise services, mobile edge computing, industrial AR and wireless factory automation.”
In a previous conversation with RCRJoel Brand, Marvell’s senior director of wireless marketing, stated that the platform’s ability to support both traditional and open RAN markets makes the chip “very unique” and helps operators transition to vRAN and O-RAN , without sacrificing a consistent user experience or high network performance.
“The problem with deploying new chips for cloud RAN is that they are different from what is used by all operators around the world,” he continued. “They have different performance, different features and different profiles in terms of power consumption. We’re not arguing good or bad, but given the steep learning curve in wireless, the easiest way to migrate from traditional to cloud-native RAN is to use the same proven silicon and software for both. We have proven that this is possible in an open, virtualized cloud architecture.”
Brand further argued that for a successful transition to an open architecture, it is crucial to draw on the expertise of the large, existing infrastructure providers, rather than trying to marginalize them. “We need your support. These vendors need to bring their expertise from the current environment to the future environment, and we help them in that process,” he said. “The goal must be to foster competition and an environment in which all vendors, including incumbents, can thrive in the cloud environment. If everyone gets behind such a goal, O-RAN and vRAN will be successful.”
To learn more, visit Marvell at Mobile World Congress, Stand 2F34, Hall 2, Fira Gran Via in Barcelona, Spain.