Wind River partners with Intel Select Solution program

5G is fueling a rapid transition to virtualisation and cloud-native technologies, and many operators are embracing a shift to a virtualised RAN for greater agility. In fact, according to a recent survey by Heavy Reading, 29% of communications service providers expect to be fully deployed in vRAN in less than three years, on what has typically been a ten-year life cycle.

Intel Select Solutions are predefined, workload-optimised solutions designed to minimise the challenges of infrastructure evaluation and deployment. Solutions are validated by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)/original design manufacturers (ODMs), certified by independent software vendors (ISVs), and verified by Intel.

The solutions are developed in extensive collaboration with hardware, software, and operating system vendor partners and delivered through the world’s leading data center and service providers.  Every Intel Select Solution includes a tailored combination of Intel technologies to deliver predictable, trusted, and compelling performance. The new solution blueprint for vRAN combines Wind River Studio with:

• The latest 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors that are optimised for network workloads.
• Intel vRAN Dedicated Accelerator ACC100.
• Intel Ethernet 800 Series Network Adapters.

“Telecommunications carriers are driving the momentum and actualising the businesses that will grow 5G and the intelligent edge. Operators will be investing nearly $900 billion in their networks in 5G technology over the next five years,” said Cyra Richardson, Chief Product Officer at Wind River. “We look forward to delivering high-reliability, ultra-low-latency, and highly efficient solutions pre-validated on Intel technology to help service providers deploy and manage their next-generation networks and maximise their total value of ownership.”

The Intel Select Solutions for vRAN include a comprehensive, workload-optimised software and firmware stack based on Studio, which is architected to deliver deliver high availability operational control through a single pane of glass to accelerate transformative business outcomes for service providers delivering intelligent edge applications. Studio capabilities include an integrated cloud platform unifying infrastructure, orchestration, and analytics so operators can deploy and manage their intelligent 5G edge networks globally.

Intel subjects the reference architectures to rigorous regression testing in a lab environment to ensure high reliability in the overall solution. Intel validates the entire hardware and software solution stack defined in the reference architectures, eliminating the complexity typically associated with supporting multi-vendor solutions.