Nokia and Intel Enhance 5G Network Performance and Energy Efficiency

Nokia Oyj and Intel announced on Tuesday a new technical collaboration focused on improving the performance, energy efficiency, and security of 5G networks.

The collaboration combines Nokia's cloud-native 5G algorithms with Intel's 4th Gen Xeon Scalable processors and software. The initiative aims to address the "network energy paradox," where power consumption often remains constant despite fluctuating network traffic. This solution is designed to help Communications Service Providers (CSPs) reduce their network energy consumption and carbon footprint.

Nokia engineers have tested the collaboration's results, reporting a 30% gain in the performance of the 5G network's User Plane Function (UPF) compared to previous generation processors. When Intel's Infrastructure Power Manager (IPM) software was used to simulate periods of lower traffic, the CPU power consumption of Nokia's 5G UPF decreased by up to 43%.

These improvements have the potential to significantly reduce operational expenditures (OPEX), lower carbon emissions, and optimize the physical network infrastructure for CSPs. Nokia and Intel are continuing their work to develop optimizations for the entire core network and other related software.

Nokia states this collaboration also supports its broader strategy of opening up network programmability to the developer community through "Network as code," enabling more efficient development of new services.