Intel announced that Chinese vendor ZTE selected Intel eASIC devices for its 5G wireless products.
The U.S. chipmaker said ZTE selected Intel eASIC devices to meet the critical cost and power requirements demanded by large-scale 5G deployments.
“Intel’s alliance with ZTE marks a major milestone in Intel eASIC devices’ 5G penetration. 5G speeds will enable new classes of applications, resulting in an exponential increase in data volume. Our customers need solutions that allow them to design optimal systems they can take to market quickly. Intel’s structured and standard ASICs enable ZTE to achieve critical cost goals and cement their position in the exploding 5G market,” said
Dan McNamara, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Programmable Solutions Group.
As 5G rollout moves from the trial phase to initial deployment, carriers need flexible solutions based on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). FPGAs provide hardware programmability to meet both prototyping and initial production requirements, Intel said.
As the 5G rollout transitions to high-volume production, FPGAs transition to ASICs to meet cost and power targets associated with high-volume shipments. Intel’s recent acquisition of eASIC enables a smooth transition from FPGA-based designs to structured ASICs, the firm added.
ZTE used FPGAs for rapid prototyping and early production. The company needed to quickly transition to a lower unit cost and reduced-power solution for high-volume deployment.
“Intel eASIC devices provide good power and cost benefits for our 5G wireless products and were essential to make a fast transition to meet our low cost and power requirements,” said Duan Xiang Yang, vice president and general manager of Wireless System Architect at ZTE.
A structured ASIC is an intermediary technology between FPGAs and standard-cell ASICs that provides unit-cost reduction and improved power efficiency. Structured ASICs offer benefits like those offered by standard-cell ASICs, but with faster development time. Intel eASIC devices are structured ASICs that provide a smooth design transition from any FPGA, the company said, and reduce unit cost and power consumption compared to FPGAs. Intel highlighted that these two benefits are especially important for high volume-markets, such as 5G radio.
Last year, Intel acquired eASIC, a privately held programmable chip company based in Santa Clara, California. eASIC makes structured ASICs, which provide better performance and power efficiency with faster design time and lower costs.
“Having a structured ASICs offering will help us better address high-performance and power-constrained applications that we see many of our customers challenged with in market segments like 4G and 5G wireless, networking and IoT,” Dan McNamara, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group, had previously said in a blog post.
