5G communication big winner? Besides FPGA, AMD 5G RF products are eye-catching

Recently, at the MWC Shanghai exhibition, GSMA announced that up to 60 operators worldwide are promoting the commercial landing of 5G-A. At the same time, we see the presence of American chip giant AMD. What advanced products does this company, which enjoys a good reputation in CPU and GPU chips, have in the field of 5G communication?
Gilles Garcia, Senior Director and Head of Wired and Wireless Communications at AMD, stated at the meeting that as a leading supplier of high-performance and adaptive computing communications, AMD is a world leader in 5G communication infrastructure. Our technology, deployed through partners and customers on many devices, can be said to have changed the lives of billions of people worldwide
The connection between AMD and the communication industry stems from AMD's previous acquisition of Serenius. In February 2022, AMD officially completed its acquisition of Selence, and Selence's FPGA products have always been in a leading position in the communication field. Both parties cooperate to form a strong product portfolio by combining AMD's advantages in processors with the advantages of Serenius's products in the 5G field.

AMD processors and FPGA products support 5G core networks and end-to-end solutions

At this conference, AMD collaborates with partners to showcase wireless communication solutions based on AMD EPYC processors and AMD adaptive FPGA/SoC devices.
FPGA has unique advantages due to its programmable flexibility and low latency, especially in situations where communication protocols are frequently changed and upgraded. Due to the higher requirements for connection speed, low latency, connection density, and spectrum bandwidth of base station RF chips in 5G communication, as well as the addition of key 5G technologies such as MassiveMIMO (Large scale Antenna Array) technology, cloud RAN, new baseband and RF architecture, there is a long iterative upgrade process and significant technical uncertainty. This makes it difficult for the market to quickly launch mature 5G ASIC chips, providing a longer time window for the application of FPGA in the 5G field.
It is reported that the AMD Center Communication 5G core network function UPF has been successfully deployed on the AMD EPYC 7003 series CPU platform and performance testing has been completed. In addition, on-site iResearch Wireless relies on its complete R&D capabilities and large-scale commercial experience in 5G base station systems to provide the industry with low latency, high throughput, and high-performance 5G end-to-end solutions based on the AMD platform. AsiaInfo Technology collaborates with AMD to create a high-performance 5G billing system solution.
5G RF transceiver chip is a wireless RF front-end chip specifically designed for 5G communication technology. RF chips play a crucial role in 5G communication, responsible for converting digital signals into wireless signals, and performing modulation, demodulation, amplification and other processing to achieve information transmission and reception.
At the exhibition, AMD showcased a Direct RF transceiver based on 5G communication design. The booth staff introduced that this transceiver is based on AMD's 16nm technology. The third-generation RFSoC is a single-chip solution optimized for 5G communication applications, integrating a direct RF transceiver and a hardcore digital front-end (DFE).
Its main structure includes four characteristics: 1. 8-channel DAC, with a maximum sampling rate of 10 Gsps; 2. 8-channel ADC, with a maximum sampling rate of 2.95 Gsps and a maximum available bandwidth of 500MHz; 3. 2-way ADC, with a maximum sampling rate of 5.9 Gsps and a maximum available bandwidth of 500MHz; 4. Hardcore Digital Front End (DFE), including digital modules designed specifically for 5G communication such as DPD, CFR, DDC/DUC, Channel Filtering, etc.
With the widespread application of 5G technology, the market demand for 5G RF transceivers continues to grow. I believe that the new products brought by AMD can bring better cooperation space for 5G upstream and downstream manufacturers, and help to better implement 5G core networks and 5G end-to-end solutions.