By Kim Markle, Director Influencer Relations, Marvell
Wind River and Marvell have collaborated to create an open, virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) solution for communication service providers (CSPs) that offers cloud scalability with the features, performance, and energy efficiency of established 5G networks. The collaboration integrates two complementary, industry-leading technologies—theMarvell® OCTEON® 10 Fusion 5G baseband processor and the Wind River Studio cloud software—to provide the carrier ecosystem a deployment-ready vRAN platform built on technologies that are widely proven in 5G networks and data centers.
CSPs aim to leverage established IT infrastructure for enhanced service agility and streamlined DevOps in the cloud-native RAN. Marvell’s OCTEON 10 Fusion processor supports these goals with programmability based on open-source, industry-standard interfaces and integration with leading cloud software platforms such as Wind River Studio.
To ensure open-source distribution of Wind River Studio software, OCTEON 10 Fusion software drivers are being used by StarlingX, an open development and integration project. Marvell’s drivers enable Wind River Studio software to communicate with and control the OCTEON 10 Fusion processor. This facilitates developer access to an optimized vRAN system that offers new options for CSPs and helps to expand the carrier ecosystem of RAN and data center hardware and software suppliers, as well as system integrators.
By Johnny Truong, Senior Manager, Public Relations, Marvell
To address the growing demands of 5G applications (and beyond), networks are not only expected, but required, to offer features, performance, and capacity competitive with traditional RAN while improving energy efficiency and cost-savings.
Watch this video of Dennis Hoffman, SVP and GM of Dell’s Telecom Systems Business discuss how Dell and Marvell will continue building on its strategic partnership in pursuit of truly open mobile networks and how they’re bringing the power of Layer 1 Acceleration technology to the vRAN architecture with Marvell’s OCTEON® 10 Fusion processor, designed for 5G RAN.
By Peter Carson, Senior Director Solutions Marketing, Marvell
and Tosin Olopade, Technical Product Line Manager, VMware
and Padma Sudarsan, Director of Engineering, RAN Architecture, VMware
VMware, a pioneer in assisting communication service providers (CSPs) in transforming their networks, is partnering up with Marvell, a leading provider of data infrastructure semiconductor solutions to improve RAN performance and ROI. This collaboration provides solutions that enable CSPs to meet the demands of 5G’s increased capacity and use cases, optimizing the revenue and efficiency of each RAN site.
RAN sites worldwide are targeted for new technology deployment, where traditional, custom-made equipment is being replaced with servers adapted from data centers. This transformation to virtualized RAN and Open RAN, which replaces hardware with software, is driving the modernization of RAN sites worldwide. This allows CSPs to select servers and software based on their strategic goals, enabling them to offer unique services compared to their competitors.
However, 5G RAN workloads, particularly Layer 1 (L1), are far more complex and latency-sensitive than the applications that general purpose CPUs have been designed to address. The load on even the most robust CPUs in the case of 5G RAN virtualization can be demanding. The rapid increase in 5G network speeds, reaching multi-gigabit-per-second, and the management of software-centric RAN Distributed Units (DUs) has resulted in rising energy consumption and cooling demands. This leads to increased costs, such as higher electricity bills, and may compromise CSPs’ plans to monetize their RAN investments.
By Kant Deshpande, Director, Product Management, Marvell
Disaggregation is the future Disaggregation—the decoupling of hardware and software—is arguably the future of networking. Disaggregation lets customers select best-of-breed hardware and software, enabling rapid innovation by separating the hardware and software development paths.
Disaggregation started with server virtualization and is being adapted to storage and networking technology. In networking, disaggregation promises that any networking operating system (NOS) can be integrated with any switch silicon. Open source-standards like ONIE allow a networking switch to load and install any NOS during the boot process.
SONiC: the Linux of networking OS Software for Open Networking in Cloud (SONiC) has been gaining momentum as the preferred open-source cloud-scale network operating system (NOS).
In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2025, 40% of organizations that operate large data center networks (greater than 200 switches) will run SONiC in a production environment.[i] According to Gartner, due to readily expanding customer interest and a commercial ecosystem, there is a strong possibility SONiC will become analogous to Linux for networking operating systems in next three to six years.
By Amit Sanyal, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Marvell
Data centers are arguably the most important buildings in the world. Virtually everything we do—from ordinary business transactions to keeping in touch with relatives and friends—is accomplished, or at least assisted, by racks of equipment in large, low-slung facilities.
And whether they know it or not, your family and friends are causing data center operators to spend more money. But it’s for a good cause: it allows your family and friends (and you) to continue their voracious consumption, purchasing and sharing of every kind of content—via the cloud.
Of course, it’s not only the personal habits of your family and friends that are causing operators to spend. The enterprise is equally responsible. They’re collecting data like never before, storing it in data lakes and applying analytics and machine learning tools—both to improve user experience, via recommendations, for example, and to process and analyze that data for economic gain. This is on top of the relentless, expanding adoption of cloud services.
