Intel And Red Hat Showcase New 5G Offerings

Why It’s Important: Red Hat and Intel aligned research and development efforts to help move 5G, networking innovation and related features more quickly into upstream, open-source projects. Intel and Red Hat’s strategic relationship pairs Red Hat OpenShift with 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors with built-in artificial intelligence (AI) acceleration, Intel® Ethernet Network Adapters, Intel® FlexRAN reference software and Intel® Smart Edge Open, an intelligent edge computing software toolkit.

Communication service providers (CoSPs) and enterprises need to embrace a cloud-native approach across the network to increase flexibility, agility and scale. Together, Intel and Red Hat can simplify challenges and complexities of delivering innovations from cloud to network to edge, allowing organizations to provide better network visibility and control to cloud partners. An example of this is the jointly designed operator portfolio for access edge deployments to assist in managing life cycles for Intel accelerators used for cloud-native RAN DU deployments on commercial Kubernetes distributions.

How It’s Used: Partners using this technology to create innovative solutions include:

• Altiostar: Altiostar launched its cloud-native open and virtual radio access network (open vRAN) software, leveraging Intel FlexRAN and the jointly designed Intel® Smart Edge Open Operators for Red Hat OpenShift. This Open vRAN solution takes advantage of the zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) capabilities within OpenShift to deliver remote service deployment and management. Altiostar software runs on servers that incorporate Intel technology like FlexRAN, Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Intel® Ethernet Controller E810. It allows customers to achieve high-performing and highly optimized open vRAN-based 5G networks.
• Casa Systems: Casa Systems’ private 5G multi-access network solution is the first cloud-native offering that allows service providers and enterprises to deploy personalized private networks with a higher level of security, application customization and differentiated performance. Built on Red Hat OpenShift with Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Intel Ethernet 800 Series Network Adapter technology, Casa’s unique private 5G multi-access and multi-domain network architecture approach breaks down previous technology barriers and simplifies the deployment of private 5G networks that are more scalable, dynamically adjustable, reliable and secure.
• Dell Technologies Services Edge: In April, Dell launched the Dell Technologies Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) reference architecture built on Intel Smart Edge. The Dell MEC controller was integrated with Red Hat OpenShift, enabling operators to reduce time to market through quicker integration of the solution into their network using public or private cloud. The Dell MEC controller takes full advantage of Intel innovations, including Xeon Scalable processors, security enhancements, SDKs like Intel® OpenVINO™ Toolkit, as well as innovations in 4G and 5G. The solution delivers an edge-native commercial platform that makes it simpler for mobile network operators to deliver private mobility and edge computing services to enterprises with a zero-trust security model.
• Turnium and Juniper Networks: The two companies announced the availability of their certified and validated cloud-native functions for Red Hat OpenShift. These cloud-native universal customer premise equipment (uCPE) workloads include certified Turnium’s software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) and validated Juniper’s cSRX firewall. The uCPE architecture is based on container-based workloads where users have the flexibility to select the capabilities to deliver and manage reliable connectivity, security and other functions accelerating the deployment of edge applications running on Intel and other uCPE architecture.
• Fixed Access: Intel and Red Hat recently launched a new cloud-native, fixed access-based blueprint leveraging Red Hat OpenShift. This blueprint encourages broadband independent software vendors to adopt open-source projects and includes Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Intel Ethernet 800 Series Network Adapters. The technology facilitates fixed-access transformation and brings the ecosystem together by encouraging open-source strategies that address the performance and flexibility issues required in fixed-access transformation toward a converged edge cloud.

“Our joint expertise in silicon, software and engineering — anchored in open source — enabled CoSPs and enterprises to more quickly implement cloud-native networks for increased agility,” said Jeni Panhorst, vice president of the Data Platforms Group and general Manager of the Network & Edge Platforms Division at Intel. “Network architects have a near infinite number of hardware solutions, offering an overwhelming selection of choices. Intel and Red Hat’s collaboration to bring together the ecosystem allows organizations to optimize applications and business processes.”