Nokia has partnered with Tampere University in Finland, to establish a “center of excellence” to enhance the development of System-on-Chip (SoC) custom processors for Nokia’s ReefShark chipset portfolio.
The partnership, which will be based at the university campus, aims to accelerate the introduction of the technology into Nokia’s ReefShark chipset portfolio. It will also enhance Nokia’s silicon capabilities and development of proprietary SoCs.
The Finnish vendor said that the new facility is expected to open in November of this year.
Nokia also noted that the main aim of the partnership is to accelerate the development of proprietary SoC chipsets, including their design and manufacture, to improve time-to-market and to build a long-term SoC development competence.The joint venture will also target an annual chip cadence with ecosystem partners, and see Nokia contribute to module and physical implementation.
Nokia will also explore areas such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and security hardware development as well as open-source hardware-based SoCs.
The project is supported by Business Finland through Nokia’s Veturi initiative that drives industrial 5G and ecosystem development with industry partners and leading universities. Nokia said it has maintained a close partnership with Tampere University since its Nokia Innovation Center was co-located with the University in the 2000s.
“We are excited to partner with Nokia to develop custom silicon System-on-Chip solutions for 5G infrastructure. This is an exciting joint project that accelerates silicon innovation and ultimately enables operators to realize the benefits of 5G,” said Jyrki Vuorinen, dean of the faculty of information technology and communication sciences at Tampere University.
“This important collaboration highlights our continued commitment to developing our ReefShark chipset portfolio and ensures that Nokia 5G solutions deliver a best-in-class performance to our customers,” said Ari Kynaslahti, head of product management at Nokia. “We look forward to working closely and collaboratively with Tampere University on this exciting venture.”
Nokia developed the ReefShark chipsets for its 5G network solutions. ReefShark, which is based on 3GPP 5G New Radio specifications, reduces size, cost and energy consumption at each cell site, while simultaneously boosting the performance of massive MIMO antennas, the vendor said.
Earlier this week, Nokia announced that it has signed 17 new 5G commercial agreements in the third quarter of the year.
With these wins, the vendor reached 100 commercial 5G deals with individual customers and a total of 160 commercial 5G engagements, including paid trials.
Nokia said that a total of 34 5G networks are already live using the company’s products and solutions.
