Nokia to advance its 5G radio portfolio, cloud infra with Intel

With Intel, Nokia will strengthen AirScale and advance the capabilities of its ReefShark chipset, based on 3GPP 5G New Radio specification.

Finnish telecom company Nokia said Thursday it is collaborating with Intel on silicon technology innovations for its 5G radio portfolio. The next-generation network needs to support billions of devices and machines, as well as millions of network nodes, for which the existing infrastructure must evolve rapidly, the company said in a statement.

The companies have jointly developed custom silicon solutions that are used in Nokia's AirScale radio access products being shipped worldwide as part of its 5G "Powered by ReefShark". ReefShark reduces size, cost and power consumption of each network element, while simultaneously boosting the performance of MIMO antennas.

With Intel, Nokia will strengthen AirScale and advance the capabilities of its ReefShark chipset, based on 3GPP 5G New Radio specification. In addition, Nokia said it will continue to adopt the latest general purpose Intel Xeon processor technology in its AirFrame cloud data center solution to realize the benefits of a common architecture from cloud to edge.

Intel's second-generation Xeon scalable processor is also included in Nokia's AirFrame data center solution for edge and core, AirScale all-in-cloud virtual RAN (vRAN) and 5G core solutions to meet 5G requirements.

Implementing technology innovations from the core to the edge of the network is key to unlocking the full potential of 5G. Through our collaboration with Nokia, our broad portfolio of products and ASIC capabilities, we are showing the value that can be realized with a consistent, high-performance architecture across the intelligent 5G network.

Dan Rodriguez, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Intel's Network Platforms Group