At the ongoing Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019 conference which started this week, Intel has announced the Intel FPGA Programmable Acceleration Card N3000 or Intel FPGA PAC N3000. Designed specifically for service providers to enable 5G next-generation core and virtualised radio access network solutions.
Intel FPGA PAC N3000 is a fully capable end-to-end solution that can be deployed at the 5G edge and network. It is already making an impact:
– 5G core solution: Affirmed Networks offers virtualized cloud-native mobile network solutions for 5G. By working with Intel’s FPGA PAC, it developed a new solution for 5G core network (CN)/evolved packet core – the first true 200 Gbps/server. Intel FPGAs for smart load balancing and CPU cache optimizations enhance software performance. They also provide lower power consumption and lower latency for diverse quality of service characteristics across multiple network slices for 5G. Affirmed Networks 5G Core Network will be demonstrated in the Intel booth at MWC.
– Edge: Rakuten, a leading global innovation company in e-commerce, communications and financial technology, and soon to be the operator of Japan’s newest and most innovative mobile network, is including Intel x86 and FPGA-based PAC for acceleration from the core to the edge to provide the first end-to-end cloud-native mobile network. Intel FPGA PAC N3000 is the distributed unit accelerator next to Intel Xeon Scalable processor where Layer 1 functions, such as forward error correction and front haul transmission, are offloaded onto an Intel FPGA. The Intel FPGA accelerates processing efficiency to improve and support user capacity, as well as reduce system cost and provide more security in the radio network.
“5G is a transformative technology, and it requires advanced network virtualization infrastructure coupled with an agile software architecture. Working with an Intel FPGA PAC N3000, we have developed a cloud-native, containerized solution for the 5G core and EPC – the first true 100G/CPU socket solution. The FPGA acceleration allows us to process this traffic load with 50 percent less CPU utilization, providing significant room for growth,” said Ron Parker, chief architect at Affirmed Networks. “Intel FPGAs optimize software performance, lowering power consumption and latency for diverse quality of service characteristics across multiple 5G network slices.”
For more details and full specifications jump over to the Intel product page by following the link below.
Source: Intel
