Samsung Sets Pace for Mobile Networks Innovation and Next-Generation vRAN With Intel

Companies complete first call on Samsung's vRAN 3.0 platform with future Intel® Xeon® processors

Samsung Electronics today announced the company has successfully 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 virtualized Open RAN network powered by Samsung’s vRAN 3.0. This achievement between Samsung and Intel is another milestone in the companies’ multi-year collaboration and represents the companies’ mutual dedication to advance virtualized Open RAN for enhanced performance and capacity.

Conducted in Samsung’s R&D lab in Korea, the companies completed the end-to-end data call using Samsung’s versatile and O-RAN-compliant virtualized RAN (vRAN) integrated with Intel’s Granite Rapids-D, Samsung’s Core and test devices. During the test, Samsung achieved significant gains as well as reduced power consumption. The test results will be demonstrated at Mobile World Congress 2024 (Samsung Networks booth, invitation-only).

This technical achievement builds on the two companies’ long-standing collaboration on vRAN, which began in 2017 and has resulted in commercially proven large-scale vRAN deployments with Tier-1 operators. The companies have been collaborating on each generation of Intel’s processors to advance vRAN, including the 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors in 2021 and 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors in 2023. With the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, the companies completed the industry’s first data call on a commercial network within just four months of the processors’ commercial availability.

“As a global vRAN innovator with proven commercial deployments at scale, Samsung is committed to expanding its ecosystem with industry-leading partners like Intel and staying at the forefront of the software-centric transformation,” said Dong Geun Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Technology Strategy Group, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “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.”

“Completing the first call on Granite Rapids D far ahead of its general availability is a remarkable achievement and is a strong reflection of Samsung’s and Intel’s close collaboration over many years,” said Cristina Rodriguez, vice president and general manager, Wireless Access Networking Division at Intel. “We remain committed to driving our multi-generational Intel® Xeon® processor roadmap to deliver the solutions operators need, and to enable new innovations in areas like energy efficiency, vRAN capacity, and AI.”

In addition to integrating Samsung vRAN software on Granite Rapids-D, Samsung and Intel are collaborating to drive AI innovations in radio networks toward enabling potential future RAN use cases such as power optimization, traffic steering, improved spectral efficiency and anomaly detection to name a few.

Samsung has pioneered the successful delivery of 5G end-to-end solutions, including chipsets, radios and core. Through ongoing research and development, Samsung drives the industry to advance 5G networks with its market-leading product portfolio, from vRAN 3.0, Open RAN, Core to private network solutions and AI-powered automation tools. The company currently provides network solutions to mobile operators that deliver connectivity to hundreds of millions of users worldwide.