Nokia announces its AirFrame Open Edge computing server blade.
SAN JOSE, Calif.–Nokia revealed its building block for edge deployments and small data centers at the NFV World Congress yesterday. The Airframe Open Edge server is compact and uses open-source software to manage network functions.
The server is designed to cut latency by bringing computing closer to the customer in an edge cloud.
Henri Tervonen, Nokia CTO and head of its R&D foundation for mobile networks, spoke about winning on the edge at a conference devoted more to software when he slyly whipped out the new sleek server blade. The blade — either by itself or in multi-rack configuration — can be inside the datacenter or anywhere from a light pole to the factory floor, on the edge of the network.
Nokia’s Nokia ReefShark chipset — designed specifically for 5G —  sits on the server. Based on 3GPP 5G New Radio specification, ReefShark has massive Multiple Input Multiple Output antennas, radio and baseband.
The Airframe uses Nokia’s real-time OpenStack distribution, compatible with Linux Open Platform for network function virtualization, which is designed to run in small data centers. Leveraging open source is supposed to make setting up the server easier.
Deliveries of the Nokia AirFrame open edge server start in Q3 2018.
