Nokia (News - Alert) has unveiled new silicon chipsets that improve upon its previous technology with greater capacity, a smaller footprint, and lower power consumption. They are delivered as plug-in units for Nokia’s AirScale 4G and 5G-ready equipment.
The ReefShark chipsets offer 84 gigabit per second capacity. That triples the capacity of Nokia’s previous solution in this product category.
This silicon enables operators to halve the size of cell tower antennas, Nokia says. And it allows for a 64 percent reduction in baseband unit power consumption.
The units employ massive MIMO. MIMO uses multiple antennae at cell towers and user devices for optimal data speeds.
ReefShark units can be stacked to deliver 6 terabit per second capacity on a single base station. Cellular service providers can use this technology to increase density in heavily populated urban areas.
Volume shipments of the ReefShark chipsets are slated to become available starting in the third quarter of this year. Nokia say it’s already working with 30 mobile operators to deploy this technology. BT (News - Alert) is apparently one of them.
"By incorporating ReefShark into our network we will leverage the huge network performance improvements that will allow us to unleash the full potential of 5G," said Neil McRae, BT Chief Architect.
Also yesterday Nokia talked about its Future X architecture for 5G. This architecture hits on many of the important networking trends we’ve been hearing about lately, including artificial intelligence, automation, cloud, network slicing, open networking, operational efficiency, and programmability.
"With our 5G Future X portfolio we are opening up network data and network intelligence to our customers to jointly program and tailor machine learning and automation that runs on our new silicon,” Marc Rouanne, president of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said. “The Future X architecture invented by our Nokia Bell Labs (News - Alert) research has made it possible to mix the knowledge across Nokia, between IP, Optics, RF, software and innovative in-house silicon. We now expect to be able to deliver unprecedented capabilities and efficiencies that will allow our customers to transform their service offering for 5G."
Edited by Maurice Nagle