Samsung Electronics, Vodafone, and AMD have announced the completion of an end-to-end call using the latest AMD processors enabling Open RAN technology.
Conducted at Samsung’s R&D lab in Korea, the call utilized Samsung’s O-RAN-compliant, virtualized RAN (vRAN) software, powered by AMD EPYC 8004 Series processors deployed on Supermicro’s Telco/Edge servers, with support from Wind River Studio Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform. The demonstration aimed to validate optimized performance, energy efficiency, and interoperability among the partners’ solutions.
This demonstration underscores Samsung and Vodafone’s commitment to reinforcing their position in the Open RAN market. The Open RAN ecosystem facilitates operators in building and modernizing mobile networks with enhanced flexibility, accelerated time-to-market (TTM), and unparalleled performance.
Nadia Benabdallah, Network Strategy and Engineering Director at Vodafone Group, expressed Vodafone’s dedication to Open RAN innovation, stating, “Reaching this milestone with top industry partners like Samsung and AMD shows Vodafone’s dedication to delivering on the promise of Open RAN innovation.”
June Moon, Executive Vice President & Head of R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics, emphasized the significance of collaboration in advancing Open RAN, stating, “The demo illustrates Samsung’s commitment to delivering the full potential of mobile networks by embracing openness.”
Kumaran Siva, corporate vice president, Strategic Market Development, AMD, highlighted the role of AMD processors in enabling modern edge and vRAN deployment models, stating, “AMD EPYC 8004 Series CPUs are optimized for modern edge and vRAN deployment models to enable the telco industry’s current evolution toward truly end-to-end open, virtualized networks.”
Prakash Sangam, Founder & Principal of Tantra Analyst, hailed the technical achievement, stating, “This technical achievement between Samsung, Vodafone and AMD validates the enhanced capabilities among all three companies’ solutions and supports new vendors in the evolving Open RAN ecosystem.”
The companies are set to demonstrate test results exceeding 1Gbps throughput for multi-UE on multi-cell configuration at MWC 2024.
Since June 2021, Samsung has been a strategic partner for Vodafone in realizing its Open RAN vision, leading to the largest Open RAN rollout in the U.K. in August 2023. Samsung’s collaboration with AMD further aims to advance 5G vRAN and virtualized Open RAN for network transformation.
Image: From left, Junehee Lee (Samsung Electronics), June Moon (Samsung Electronics), Nadia Benabdallah (Vodafone Group), Yago Tenorio (Vodafone Group), Alberto Ripepi (Vodafone Group), Woojune Kim (Samsung Electronics)
