Samsung said this week that it has proved operation of Intel’s latest SoC designed for more efficient vRAN operations in a live commercial network.
What Samsung has announced is that it has taken the Intel SoC and, a few months after availability, used it to run a commercial call using its vRAN software on a T1 USA operators’ network. As with its other integrations, Samsung deployed in an HPE server with Wind River cloud environment supporting its vRAN software.
For the trial, Intel integrated its vRAN with Intel’s 6700-B series SOC – a package within the Xeon 6 Granite Rapids family as announced by the chip maker at the start of 2025. The 6700-B series includes Intel’s vRAN Boost acceleration as well as other enhancements that you can read about here: Intel keeps up the vRAN fight with XEON 6 SoC.
Samsung told TMN that the trial supported both FDD and TDD bands on a single server—a task that previously required two separate servers for the same capacity, it said.
According to the vendor, “This significantly improves operational efficiency and simplifies the management of complex network configurations. The consolidation of workloads also brings resource pooling efficiency that inherently allows the compute platform to support a high order of MIMO layers, allowing spare resources to be utilised for AI enablement to move the benefits of vRAN to achieve greater milestones. The enablement of AI paves the path to solidify the fundamental architecture of vRAN for AI-native and 6G networks.”
That view reflects Intel’s insistence that operators can achieve the bulk of their in and for the network AI needs without adopting a new AI-RAN general purpose processor architecture. At MWC last year, Christina Rodriguez, VP and GM, Network & Edge, Intel, told TMN, “What you can do with Xeon SoC AI is infrastructure and power management, predictive maintenance, management of resources, everything that has to do with taking automation to the next level. And on the radio side, taking radio algorithms and making them smart; for example we have an AI-enhanced beam forming algorithm using just one core. You don’t need to have a super power-hungry GPU for the functionality we want to do in the RAN: the AI models running the RAN will be small to medium models – you don’t require some heavy GPU.”
Samsung said in its release this week that its single server approach “also facilitates operators’ seamless adoption of AI-RAN and AI services, accelerating their readiness for 6G through its flexibility and automation capability.”
Although in this instance Samsung hasn’t been permission by its operator customer to name it, given that this was a commercial “call” on a live T1 US network the supporting operator is very likely to be existing customer Verizon, which has been a major customer for Samsung’s vRAN build to date.
So does that mean Verizon is about to make a move to the single server solution, based on the new Xeon 6 Intel chip? The vendor told TMN that while it can’t name the operator specifically “or speak to their decisions”, the completion of this “industry-first milestone proves that the technology is ready today”.
“We look forward to deploying commercially at scale when the operator is ready,” Samsung said.
However, Samsung was able to talk about the advantages that the platform brings to vRAN deployments, acting as an endorsement for the Intel package.
It told TMN: “The new Intel Xeon 6 SoC enables a breakthrough in how mobile networks are built and operated – evolving from traditionally separate network functions across RAN, core, transport and security to a single, high-performance commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) server.
“This consolidation delivers several advantages. First, it simplifies network architecture, reducing site complexity and making it easier for operators to deploy and manage networks. Second, by running more workloads (both network and AI workloads) on fewer, more powerful servers, operators can significantly lower power consumption, CAPEX and OPEX; supporting more sustainable network operations.
“Most importantly, the platform is also ready for future mobile networks. In addition to enabling AI-native network capabilities today, the platform also provides the flexibility and compute power needed to support 6G-ready architectures in the future.
“In short, operators get higher performance, better efficiency and a clearer, faster path to AI and next-generation networks without additional infrastructure complexity.”
Samsung has been named as a provider for Vodafone’s Open RAN rollout in Europe, as well as engaging with Orange on several trials. Orange executives have spoken before about the important of a single server solution to the economics of vRAN. So although this PR may seem a little unremarkable, given that it confirms what you’d expect – that Intel’s newest chip works where its previous generation did also – where operators are looking outside of their traditional RAN suppliers, or want to move to a cloud environment, the XEON 6 can be, in Samsung’s view, a viable platform for that change.
