Traditionally, telecommunications providers have had limited vendor choices when selecting RAN components for their networks. With O-RAN, this changes, as a broader ecosystem of vendors can now deliver multivendor, best-of-breed solutions. O-RAN opens the door to broader innovation from industry-leading chip manufacturers, storage solutions, networking technology, etc.
The PowerEdge XR11 and XR12, for example, provide significant flexibility over purpose-built, all-in-one appliances, by leveraging the industry’s most advanced best-of-breed components. The current XR11/XR12 server configurations feature:
- High-performance processor: Third-generation Intel® Xeon® scalable processor with up to 36 cores
- Spacious memory: Up to 8 x DDR4 3200MT/s RDIMMs/LRDIMMs (1TB maximum or 768GB plus Intel Optane™ Persistent Memory 200 Series)
- High-capacity storage: Up to 4 (XR11) or 6 (XR12) x 2.5-inch SAS/SATA or NVMe SSD plus Dell BOSS-S1 internal drive (2 x M.2) for boot; PowerEdge RAID Controller 10.5 & 11 plus NVMe RAID
- Peripherals for enhanced performance including: Fixed 4 x 25GbE LAN on Motherboard (LOM); one PCIe low-profile slot Gen4 (x8) and up to 2 (XR11) or 4 (XR12) x PCIe full-height slots Gen4 (x16/x16); the Intel-based vRAN dedicated ACC100 FEC accelerator from Silicom; up to 2 x SW GPUs (XR11) or up to 3 x SW GPUs or up 2 x DW GPUs (XR12)
By providing multiple CPU, storage, peripheral, and acceleration options, PowerEdge XR11/12 servers offer telecommunications providers the flexibility to deploy their vRAN systems in a variety of different environments. These servers can be customized to meet specific density, space, and performance requirements. For example, XR11/12 servers can be configured to specific applications, such as:
- High-performance computing featuring a higher core/node density per rack, density-optimized compute, and low-latency I/O configurations to support rendering, vectorization, advanced vector extensions, and other compute-intensive applications
- Scale-optimized deployments that require high performance and additional features to allow telco providers to scale-out vRAN systems while avoiding over-provisioning efficiently
- Edge-optimized deployments that can be configured to support both tier-one operator networks and enterprise customer networks with considerations for minimal footprint, remote management, and additional security as needed
- GPU-optimized deployments that deliver hardware acceleration to support demanding workloads, including high-performance computing applications, artificial intelligence, and machine learning applications, data analytics, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments