In this vignette of The 5G Factor, The Futurum Group’s Ron Westfall and Todd R. Weiss share their perspectives on Marvell’s OCTEON Fusion silicon hardware, including its Marvell OCTEON Fusion vRAN accelerator, its specifications, and where it fits in the RAN marketplace. The discussion spotlighted:
Marvell OCTEON Delivers vRAN Innovation. In the vRAN space, Marvell Technology, Inc., has been providing some serious competition for Intel and other established vendors in recent years. Marvell’s latest OCTEON Fusion vRAN accelerators are host server CPU agnostic and include RAN software programmability based on open source, industry-standard interfaces. The Marvell OCTEON Fusion accelerators also offer full Open RAN compliance and inline hardware acceleration with the features, performance, and power parity required by today’s 5G mobile operators. With these capabilities software developers can leverage Marvell’s OCTEON Fusion silicon hardware, as well as any standards-compliant Data Processor Unit (DPU), without the need to know its detailed implementation. We evaluate the ecosystem impact of Marvell’s OCTEON Fusion including how Nokia is using customized Marvell OCTEON silicon to augment its ReefShark chipset family across key applications such as multi-RAT RAN and transport.
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Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
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Transcript:
Ron Westfall: From your perspective, what do you see that Marvell is doing that is differentiated?
Todd R. Weiss: I think I’ve been covering this company for about four or five years. It’s a fascinating company. It’s tiny compared to Intel, but man, they are innovative, they are flexible, they are quick to be able to react and they’re doing some amazing kinds of things. From my view, unlike the so-called look aside general purpose alternative, the Marvell architecture is host server CPU-agnostic and uniquely enables RAN. It also has software programmability based on open source industry standard interfaces, which is really important and also helps them work with all kinds of other vendor stuff. It also has software programmability based on open source industry standard interfaces and inline hardware acceleration that delivers feature performance and power parity compared to existing 5G networks, which are honestly absolutely critical requirements of mobile operators.
And with a comprehensive set of inline 5G hardware accelerators, standard PCI server interfaces, and full open RAN compliance, software developers can easily leverage Marvell’s OCTEON fusion Silicon hardware, or for that matter any data processor unit or DPU that’s compliant with these standards without the need to know its detailed implementation. That is huge. Marvell doing this, it’s huge, because what that does is that makes these things easier to use, these components easier to plug in, these components more flexible in any use. That to me is incredible and that’s where a small company like Marvell can take those kinds of leadership roles. They juke when other companies are going the other way. I think that’s a really big feature. Furthermore, the Marvell OCTEON Fusion vRAN Accelerator, in the form of a PCIE card, which is simple to install and use is host server CPU-agnostic, whether ARM or X86-based, and it’s supported by multiple OEMs from both the RAN and server segments.
Marvell is also working directly with hyperscale cloud customers on vRAN enablement. Bottom line, I just think Marvell is doing amazing things. There is no vRAN alternative that’s as open and optimized and widely supported as the Marvell platform. I’m impressed with them so much. It uniquely enables cloud scalability, including integration of the largest cloud orchestration and management software platforms as well as feature performance and power efficiency that is on par with today’s most advanced 5G networks. They’re really doing amazing things. We’re going to be hearing a lot more from Marvell and 5G and many other aspects of technology over the next years.
Ron Westfall: Yeah, no, this is just great for the entire 5G ecosystem. Clearly competition is driving at least the chip suppliers to up their game. And I think clearly Intel has gotten onto the inline acceleration bandwagon for example. So those are all excellent points, Todd, I fully agree that Marvell is definitely making a huge difference in driving competition in the field. And again, I agree that the inline architecture just has as competitive advantages over what Intel was doing before, with what was called the look-aside approach.
And so now operators or cloud providers, whoever else is implementing it, can simply take the SMARTnet capabilities and combine them with the COTT server hardware to gain these advantages. Now with Intel on the inline bandwagon, with that new offering, again vRAN Boost, the processing power and capabilities of market-wide inline architecture anticipate will improve through silicon design advances.
We just touched on them substantially. And also enable the chip set suppliers including Marvell naturally, but certainly Qualcomm, AMD and Nvidia as well as Intel today. Of note, now Nokia is an example of a customer that is using the Marvell OCTEON silicon to augment its ReefShark chip set family across those applications such as multi-RAN as well as transport. And when I’m looking ahead, I see layer one processing, L1 processing demands increasing substantially due to higher radio capacity needs and the lower latency demands out there and the conation from 5G standalone to 5G down the row. And ultimately in terms of 6G, in terms of throughput, multi-sector, macrocell base stations, microcell base stations, and for that matter, intelligent radio-head environments. And go ahead, Todd.
Todd R. Weiss: Yeah, there’s a lot going on, but what I was thinking when you were talking just a minute ago, is that Marvell is helping to push Intel to higher levels, and Intel is helping to push Marvell. The gaps that are there in the marketplace are where smaller companies can quickly come in and do things, but Intel’s paying attention. I think this is good for the whole entire semiconductor marketplace, because small companies help drive innovation and the big companies realize it and see it, and they may not have started it, they didn’t think it was a big enough niche for them, but then they realize that niche is big enough for everyone. So I think this is a really interesting marketplace right now.
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Author Information
Ron is an experienced, customer-focused research expert and analyst, with over 20 years of experience in the digital and IT transformation markets, working with businesses to drive consistent revenue and sales growth.
Ron holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from University of Nevada — Las Vegas and a Bachelor of Arts in political science/government from William and Mary.
