Full support for Intel's innovative new 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable platforms with Intel® vRAN Boost on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Canonical announces their support for 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors with Intel® vRAN Boost on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS at MWC 2023, delivering immediate compatibility with the advanced embedded silicon-based accelerators and a host of other improvements in the platform. With the integration of the Ubuntu real-time kernel, customers can immediately benefit from the power of the Intel Xeon processors and drive their virtualized, OpenRAN architectures to meet the ever-increasing demand for fast and reliable connectivity in the modern mobile network landscape.
With the implementation of fully virtualized, OpenRAN architecture, mobile operators can deploy all layers of the RAN stack as virtual functions that can be dynamically managed by orchestration systems, allowing for greater flexibility and efficient utilization of network resources. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with real-time kernel was engineered to enable unrivalled performance and efficiency for communications service providers.
Intel 4th Gen Xeon Scalable processors delivers up to twice the capacity at the same power envelope for vRAN workloads vs. the prior generation. And 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors with Intel® vRAN Boost integrates vRAN acceleration directly into the CPU providing approximately 20% additional compute power savings, beyond the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors’ generational gains. Canonical Ubuntu has been validated on both Dell and HPE platforms based on these devices, ensuring that the solution offers optimal reliability and scalability, as well as operator choice.
Canonical’s Real-Time Kernel for Intel FlexRAN
Canonical is delivering optimized, secure, and efficient server images for telecommunication workloads and enabling 5G adoption by providing real-time kernel support in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Real-time kernel delivers optimal performance and low latency for network sensitive workloads and security features. It enables thread scheduling by pinning cores to processes. It isolates and dedicates the cores to both host and applications for optimal resource utilization.
Canonical and Intel’s contributed efforts to deliver scalable and reliable Ubuntu real-time kernel that is optimized for 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors executing Intel FlexRAN reference software for vRAN and Canonical strictly confined MicroK8s. Strict confinement uses the security features of the Linux kernel, including AppArmor, seccomp, and namespaces to prevent applications and services from accessing the wider system. In addition to the signal processing software implementing the L1 of the RAN stack, FlexRAN includes a control plane and agent API. Agent API separates the control plane from the data plane. Hence, separation provides a cost-efficient and reliable RAN environment.
MWC Live Demo: Real-time auto-scaling of vDU in 5G RAN network
Canonical will be demonstrating the auto-scaling of 5G RAN components, i.e vDU, at MWC Barcelona 2023. The test setup comprises Canonical’s MicroK8s cluster enabled with Ubuntu real-time kernel, Intel FlexRAN reference software, and Intel accelerator. The recorded version can be found below where RAN components are deployed in microservices architecture on Canonical’s MicroK8s cluster. The example represents a real-life scenario of a stadium with high bandwidth demands for autoscaling resources. Under normal circumstances, 5G entertains requests including file transfers, messages, and general communications. Bandwidth utilization is reasonable with guaranteed SLAs. Contrarily, in case of massive events, 5G needs to serve requests for applications including virtual reality (VR), live streaming, online sharing, high-quality streaming that requires higher bandwidths.
For more on what Canonical will be showcasing at MWC, visit their blog, and book a one-to-one meeting with their team of experts to go through demos, and your telco transformation.