SoftBank and Nvidia are leading the Artificial Intelligence RAN Alliance, which launched in 2024 with founding members including Amazon Web Services, Arm, DeepSig, Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia, Northeastern University, Samsung Research and T-Mobile. The alliance has grown to 132 members, but Intel has chosen not to join at this stage, saying the decision is driven by practical considerations rather than opposition to Artificial Intelligence in the radio access network. Intel executives stress that Artificial Intelligence can already be deployed in live networks using current architectures and that the company is continuing to evaluate how new groups fit alongside existing work.
Intel points to established standards bodies such as 3GPP, the O-RAN Alliance, the Telecom Infrastructure Project and 6GIC as providing strong governance for network Artificial Intelligence and as mechanisms to avoid fragmentation. The company says it remains active across these forums and is assessing how the Artificial Intelligence RAN Alliance aligns with ongoing initiatives and where participation would make sense for the wider industry. Intel’s strategy centers on server-based RAN deployments powered by its latest Xeon processors, which it argues can deliver tangible Artificial Intelligence benefits without requiring additional specialized hardware at the cell site.
The Xeon 6 system-on-chip, which launched last year, includes built-in Artificial Intelligence acceleration through advanced matrix extensions and increases core counts to as many as 72 cores, up from 42 in an earlier release. Intel says that by having 72 cores, “we can reduce the number of servers so we go from more than one server per site to the possibility to have one server per site,” which it describes as a major improvement for total cost of energy, complexity and power consumption. This approach contrasts with Nvidia’s push for GPUs in RAN infrastructure, although Intel avoids framing the issue as a direct GPU versus CPU battle and acknowledges that GPUs play a very important role in Artificial Intelligence.
Industry analysts note that Artificial Intelligence has been used for years to optimize and improve the RAN, often through traditional machine learning, but questions remain over running non-RAN workloads on RAN infrastructure and where to place those workloads between the far edge and near edge. Proofs of concept have shown GPUs acting as a computing platform in place of systems-on-chips that combine specialized ASICs with multi-core CPUs, yet this remains a work in progress. Major vendors including Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, Samsung, Qualcomm, Marvell, Intel, Nvidia and Arm hold differing views on the viability of GPUs in base stations, which hinge on finding monetizable non-RAN workloads, orchestrating them alongside a reliable RAN and achieving cost and energy efficiency. Intel maintains it will continue to engage across multiple forums such as the Telecom Infrastructure Project and 3GPP as Artificial Intelligence becomes pervasive throughout the telecom ecosystem.
