Viettel High Tech (VHT), the research and development (R&D) arm of Vietnam’s Viettel Group has completed a 5G mobile network field trial deployment in collaboration with computer chip maker AMD.
Viettel Group’s telecommunications arm, Viettel Telecom, is the largest mobile telecom operator in Vietnam with more than 130 million customers,
VHT is expecting to complete the Viettel 5G mobile network development and have it up and running by the end of this year.
AMD is the exclusive radio unit (RU) silicon supplier for Viettel's indigenous 5G radio development.
VHT is using AMD Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC radio devices.
The MPSoC is a system-on-chip architecture that includes up to four ARM Cortex-A53 application processors and two ARM Cor- tex-R5 real-time processors integrated into the UltraScale+ programmable logic.
After completing the first field trial, Zynq MPSoCs are now set to be extended to 300 Macro 8T8R base stations and 900 5G 8T8R Macro radios, VHT said.
The Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC was also chosen by Viettel for its first-generation 64T64R Massive MIMO radio which is currently being optimised for field trials, the company said.
Viettel is also developing the next generation of radios to also include Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC devices, the company added.
The partnership indicates how AMD has benefited from its recent acquisition of Xilinx..
The buyout has provided AMD access to new markets like 5G networking, gaming, communications and high-performance computing, areas where Xilinx has a strong presence..
The Xilinx business has now become the Adaptive and Embedded Computing Group (AECG) within AMD, led by former Xilinx CEO Victor Peng.
VHT’s general director, Nguyen Vu Ha, said the company was working with AMD to “incorporate” its adaptable SoC (silicon on chip) technology into the new generation of 5G networks.
“Going from VHT's history of making 4G BTS, this decision to scale for the growing demands of 5G was based on evaluating various factors, including flexibility, simplification, design stability and the experience of engineers,” he added.
AMD’s corporate vice president of APAC sales, Adaptive and Embedded Computing Group, Yousef Khalilollahi, said that 5G provides new opportunities “to offer” higher levels of performance, power efficiency and new services along with increased reliability required to “meet the growing data demands” of cellular networks.
