Yesterday, Intel announced a strategic collaboration agreement that will see Ericsson use Intel’s 18A process and manufacturing technology.
Intel will manufacture custom 5G system-on-chip (SoC) for Ericsson’s which will contribute to ensuring Ericsson’s 5G infrastructure is ready for future innovation.
Intel says that 18A is its most advanced node on the company's five-nodes-in-four-years roadmap and is scheduled for release in 2024 (slightly ahead of the initial schedule).
It builds on new technologies that appear in the Intel 20A, also scheduled for release next year.
18A will build on the new gate-all-around transistor architecture and backside power delivery that appeared first in Intel 20A, with Intel planning to deliver ribbon architecture innovation and increased performance along with continued metal linewidth reduction.
Intel says these technologies will put it in a process leadership position in 2025, elevating future offerings its customers bring to market.
For Ericsson, this means they will be able to harness the efficiency benefits of the 18A process node for their custom SoC’s.
The two companies will also work closer together to help improve Ericsson’s cloud RAN solutions.
“We will be expanding our collaboration that we announced at MWC 2023 to work together with the ecosystem to accelerate industry-scale open RAN utilising standard Intel Xeon-based platforms,” said Fredrik Jejdling, executive vice president and head of networks at Ericsson.
By optimising 4th Gen Intel Xeon scalable processors with Intel vRAN Boost, the company’s partnership will enhance Ericsson’s communication service provider customers experiences using the network.
Ericsson and Intel believe that improvements in Ericsson’s cloud RAN technology will increase network capacity and energy efficiency while granting users greater flexibility and scalability.
“We look forward to working together with Ericsson, an industry leader, to build networks that are open, reliable and ready for the future,” Sachin Katti, senior vice president and general manager of the network and edge group at Intel agreed.
Intel reaffirmed its belief that as 5G deployments continue, the future lies in fully programmable, open software-defined networks.
It believes that these changes need to be powered by the same cloud-native technologies that transformed the data centre, unlocking enhanced agility and automation.
