“Intel’s alliance with ZTE marks a major milestone in Intel eASIC device’s 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,” explained 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 are looking for flexible solutions and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are seen as being able to provide hardware programmability capable of meeting both prototyping and initial production requirements.
As the 5G rollout transitions to high volume production the FPGAs transition to ASICs in order to meet cost and power targets associated with high-volume shipments. Intel’s recent acquisition of eASIC will enable a relatively smoother transition from FPGA-based designs to structured ASICs.
ZTE has used FPGAs for rapid prototyping and early production and was looking to 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 we saw then as being essential to making a fast transition to meet our low cost and power requirements,” said Duan Xiang Yang, VP and General Manager of Wireless System Architect at ZTE.
eASIC devices are structured ASICs that provide a smooth design transition from any FPGA. They reduce unit cost and power consumption when compared to FPGAs and these benefits are seen as being especially important for high volume-markets, such as 5G radio, reducing the design’s bill of materials (BOM) cost and power consumption.
