Intel develops FPGA programmable acceleration card to enable next-gen 5G solutions

1 min read

Looking to enable 5G next-generation core and virtualised radio access network solutions, Intel has developed the FPGA Programmable Acceleration Card N3000.

The N3000 is a customisable platform designed for service providers delivering high throughput, lower latency and high-bandwidth applications.

It is capable of accelerating network traffic up to 100 Gbps and of supporting up to 9GB DDR4 and 144MB QDR IV memory for high-performance applications. Commenting Ron Parker, chief architect at Affirmed Network, said: “Working with the N3000, we have developed a cloud-native, containerised solution for the 5G core and EPC - the first true 100G/CPU socket solution. The FPGA acceleration allows us to process this traffic load with 50 per cent less CPU utilisation, providing significant room for growth.

“Intel FPGAs optimise software performance, lowering power consumption and latency for diverse quality of service characteristics across multiple 5G network slices.”

The new acceleration card allows for optimisation of data plane performance to achieve lower costs, while maintaining a high degree of flexibility, according toIntel. The support of end-to end industry standard and open source tools provides users with the ability to adapt quickly to evolving workloads and standards.

Intel adds that the programmability and flexibility of an FPGA also allows customers to create tailored solutions by utilising reference internet protocols (IPs) for networking function acceleration workloads such as vRAN, vBNG, vEPC, IPSec and VPP.