Road to 5G: Intel and Industry Partners Accelerate 5G in China

At the Intel 5G Network Summit in Beijing, China, Sandra Rivera, senior vice president of Intel’s Network Platforms Group, unveiled new developments across the 5G value chain alongside a powerful ecosystem of industry leaders, including Baidu, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, H3, Huawei, Tencent, Unisoc and ZTE.

“By providing end-to-end technologies and collaboration with our partner ecosystem in China, Intel will accelerate the path to 5G. This is another excellent example of how we are uniquely able to bring together the worlds of connectivity, computing and cloud for a seamlessly connected, powerfully smart 5G future.”
–Sandra Rivera, Intel senior vice president of the Network Platforms Group

Why It’s Important: Intel’s end-to-end portfolio of technologies and solutions makes it a key enabler delivering on the promise of 5G. Intel is bringing together an ecosystem of telecommunications equipment manufacturers (TEMs) and operators to accelerate 5G commercialization. Through leading industry keynotes and a panel, today’s event also gave attendees a deep look at the progress being made by Intel and partners in 5G networks in China.

What Was Unveiled: Among the day’s top news:
•Unisoc, which produces chipsets for mobile phones, shared plans to utilize Intel 5G modems for mid-tier Android* smartphones in China and globally with its applications processor, ROC1. Unisoc CTO Xiaoxin Qiu appeared on stage with Dr. Cormac Conroy, Intel vice president and general manager of the Communication and Devices Group, who said Intel will target broad global markets, building upon its strong momentum in LTE modems as 5G scales.
•Cloud provider Baidu’s System Department executive director Zhenyu Hou announced that a joint artificial intelligence and 5G innovation lab will be developed with Intel to explore converged edge and cloud services to provide better user experiences, delivering 5G-ready applications in the areas of the Internet of Things, entertainment and automotive.
•China Unicom and the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) unveiled plans to collaborate with Intel to deliver new 5G experiences and capabilities at the coming 2022 Winter Olympics.

Why an Ecosystem Matters: Intel has a long history in China as an enabler with technologies for computing, data center and cloud and will deliver 5G with its ecosystem to service providers and operators. Its partners in the region are key to this transformation. Because 5G experiences will only be as capable as the network that supports them, Intel’s focus in cloud computing from the data center to the edge to devices enables partners to leverage existing Intel® Xeon® processor-based infrastructure to rapidly develop, test and deploy the next-generation experiences and services for customers. This includes network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) solutions that run on Intel.

Other Unveilings:
•Alibaba AliOS’ named Intel as one of the first strategic partners of its intelligent transportation initiative, aiming to support the construction of an intelligent road traffic network. The two companies, along with Datang Telecom will explore v2x usage model with respect to 5G communication and edge computing based on the Intel Network Edge Virtualization Software Development Kit (NEV SDK), as shared at the recent Alibaba Yunqi Conference in Hangzhou. (Earlier story: Alibaba and Intel Transforming Data-Centric Computing from Hyperscale Data Centers to the Edge)
•H3C, an Ethernet switch maker, and Comba Telecom Holdings* outlined plans to use an Intel FlexRAN 5G NR-compliant solution for 5G.
•Huawei shared successes in interoperability trials with Intel as part of the IMT 2020 5G Phase 3 testing and announced that the two companies will continue to work together on driving this International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standard to completion.
•Tencent WeTest is deploying an industry-leading edge-cloud gaming platform based on Intel Xeon processors to drive the gaming industry ecosystem into next phase of transformation with a focus on infrastructure, game R&D, distribution and devices.