Samsung Electronics and Intel are making steady progress with advancing virtualised Open RAN a reality in global networks. Samsung Electronics announced that they have completed the industry's first end-to-end call in a lab environment with a future Intel Xeon Processor (codenamed Granite Rapids-D), on a virtualised Open RAN network powered by Samsung's vRAN 3.0. The call was made in a Samsung R&D lab in Korea. The companies used Intel's Granite Rapids-D processor and Samsung's versatile and O-RAN-compliant virtualised RAN (vRAN). Further, the test devices and core was provided by Samsung only.
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The test proved to be successful as Samsung saw significant gains with reduced power consumption, an achievement that will pave the way for the future. Samsung has said that it will be demonstrating the test results at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 at Samsung Networks Booth. But it will only be showcased on an invite-only basis.
Samsung and Intel have been working together since 2017 to advance vRAN. It has resulted in commercially proven large-scale vRAN deployments with Tier-1 telecom operators. Whenever there's a new Intel processor in the market, Samsung and Intel work together to see how it can advance vRAN.
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In 2023, Intel's 4th Gen Xeon Scalable processors came to the market. In just four months of commercial availability of the chip, Samsung and Intel collaborated to complete the industry's first data call on a commercial network.
Dong Geun Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Technology Strategy Group, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics said, "This first call represents Samsung’s unparalleled ability to deliver the full potential of mobile networks for the future by embracing a virtual and open approach."
In addition to this, Samsung and Intel are also working on driving AI innovations in the radio networks toward enabling potential future RAN use cases.
