Intel is planning to make a big splash at MWC Barcelona 2023 as a potential savior of communication service providers expected to be in heavy attendance at the in-person event starting Feb. 27.
While Intel is into seemingly everything related to electronics, from chip designs to AI research and lobbying national governments for funds to finance chip fabs, it is also focused on helping CoSP’s with cloud-native infrastructure. While it barely gets much attention for doing so, Intel says it has been working for more than 10 years to move networks from what it terms “fixed-function hardware” over to programmable, software-defined platforms.
CoSP’s face worries about security with cloud-native, but also use of unscalable proprietary solutions and the need to lower costs and power, according to an Intel-sponsored survey done by IDC of 300 CoSP network professionals and architects.
The results found both security and visibility over the entire infrastructure to be tied for their biggest headaches, each at 73%, according to Intel.
The visibility finding showed it was difficult to detect and correlate faults across the network core, RAN and edge with longer time needed to resolve root causes.
The survey also found nearly half of respondents wanted more support and training from the supply chain, including turnkey solutions.
As expected, Intel said it is prepared to meet these network admin needs, partly with its recent launch of 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, boasting double the throughput capacity of VRAN over previous generations without increasing power. At the launch, Telefonica CTO Enrique Blanco said his company used prior Xeons to gain a 7% power reduction amid a 7X traffic increase over six years.
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Intel also has crypto acceleration in it processors and Software Guard Extensions that use a small bit of CPU memory to create a secure enclave to protect application code and data.
And, 4th Gen Xeons and Platform Telemetry can be used to track and measure operational metrics.
Alex Quach, Intel general manager of wireline and core networks outlined such capabilities and more in a recent blog.
He noted that nearly all known vitualized network servers run on Intel products, with 90% of core networks expected to be virtualized by the end of 2023, according to a Dell’Oro forecast.
Intel’s booth at MWC is in Hall 3, Stand 3E31.