Industry first deployment drives new efficiencies, higher productivity

DALLAS, TX – Verizon recently demonstrated a significant boost to network performance on its commercial network in Dallas, TX when it completed the industry’s first data session using Intel’s new 4th Generation Xeon Scalable processor with Intel® vRAN Boost on Samsung’s virtualized RAN (vRAN) solution. The trial resulted in meaningful power efficiency gains, the ability to manage higher workloads and higher throughput performance.

“As customers continue to increase their data usage and use our network in different ways, it is critical to continue to drive efficiencies to provide the best possible performance at the most efficient cost,” said Adam Koeppe, SVP of Technology Planning at Verizon. “As we continue to roll out virtualized cell sites and expand our 5G service, the use of this advanced processor will have tangible benefits for us as network operators and for our customers in how our network serves their needs.”

Intel’s newest vRAN processor supports the additional bandwidth of C-band spectrum which Verizon recently announced it is actively incorporating into its network. With dynamic and intelligent power management from Intel, the Samsung vRAN solution showed higher energy efficiency. The processor’s substantial capacity improvement provides the ability to consolidate more workloads onto a single server which was previously accomplished with multiple servers. It also provides an open processing platform to add innovative new features, optimizations and services without requiring a hardware upgrade.

“Continued 5G network transformations like this achievement, underpinned by our differentiated design innovations in Xeon, including fully integrated vRAN acceleration, is showcasing the uncompromised benefits of virtualization at scale,” said Dan Rodriguez, CVP and GM Network and Edge Solutions Group, Intel. “Together with Verizon, a pioneer in the industry, and our ecosystem partners, we are enabling a first-of-its-kind high performance, power efficient radio access network so that they can deliver even better experiences for their customers.”

“As the only major vendor with large-scale commercial vRAN deployed across the world, we are thrilled to continue to push the boundaries of this innovative technology to provide many benefits for Verizon’s customers,” said Magnus Ojert, Senior Vice President, Networks Business, Samsung Electronics America. “Our enhanced vRAN solution when integrated with Intel's latest processor offers greater capacity and increased power savings. We look forward to continuing to advance vRAN towards a more scalable, flexible network that delivers carrier-grade performance, management and reliability.”