Intel and Ericsson develop 5G platform
Intel and Ericsson have partnered to develop a software and hardware management platform for 5G, network function virtualisation (NFV), and distributed cloud.
The two companies will combine Ericsson's software-defined infrastructure (SDI) management software and Intel's Rack Scale Design for the multi-year project.
"Our infrastructure manageability collaboration with Ericsson will help communications service providers remove deployment barriers, reduce costs, and deliver new 5G and edge services with cloudlike speed on a flexible, programmable and intelligent network," Intel Network Platform Group SVP Sandra Rivera said.
It will help carriers deploy open cloud and NFV infrastructure, Ericsson head of Cloud and NFV Business Area Digital Services Lars Mårtensson added, with the product to be demonstrated at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019 in Barcelona later this month.
In September, Intel had said its technology would be used by Ericsson as well as Nokia in the first series of 5G deployments globally.
"Intel is powering the first wave of 5G networks," Rivera said at the time.
"Starting with our 5G New Radio modems, we're building a portfolio of capabilities that lend an additional foundation to the hundreds of millions of modem devices that we have shipped to the market for 4G networks."
Intel and Ericsson have collaborated on 5G for carriers across the globe, including T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone Group, BT, Telia, Swisscom, Telefonica, Lifecell, Etisalat, MTN, Turkcell, Ooredoo, Orange, China Mobile, China Unicom, SoftBank, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Chungwa Telecom, Far EasTone, and Telstra.
Intel announced its 2019 5G modem in November, with the XMM 8160 5G multimode modem to provide 5G connectivity to smartphones, PCs, and broadband access gateways. Intel said it will provide peak speeds of up to 6Gbps when it launches in the second half of 2019.
At the end of September, Intel also announced a series of new 5G developments in China alongside Huawei, ZTE, Tencent, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Baidu, and Unisoc, including using its 5G modems in mid-tier Unisoc Android smartphones.
During CES 2019, Intel also announced its latest 5G and AI push as Project Athena, an innovation program with new industry specifications for laptops.
Intel is expecting the first devices using Project Athena to launch in the second half of 2019, with its innovation partners on the project including Dell, Google, HP, Samsung, Microsoft, Acer, Asus, Lenovo, and Innolux.
"Including 5G and artificial intelligence, Project Athena creates a path forward to accelerate laptop innovation," Intel said at CES.
Intel is additionally expanding its system-on-a-chip (SoC) range with a 10nm-based SoC code-named Snow Ridge, which it said was "developed specifically for 5G wireless access and edge computing".
Ericsson, meanwhile, most recently announced a 5G partnership with Fujitsu in October, in addition to 5G partnerships with Juniper and Qualcomm. On the carrier side, it most recently announced plans for 5G deployments with Telstra, Optus, and T-Mobile.
Ericsson added three new products to its 5G hardware and software portfolio in September, including spectrum sharing between 4G and 5G bands, street macro transport solutions across mmWave deployments, and RAN compute.
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