Nokia has launched its new ReefShark chipsets, which leverage in-house silicon expertise to reduce the size, cost and power consumption of operators' networks and meet the massive compute and radio requirements of 5G. The company has also outlined the scope of its Future X architecture for 5G, the basis for its new reference silicon design and the foundation of its 5G technology and services portfolio.

According to Nokia, ReefShark chipsets for radio frequency (RF) units such as the radio used in antennas significantly improve their performance. This results in halving the size of massive MIMO antennas. ReefShark chipsets also reduce power consumption in baseband units by 64%, compared to such units in use today. 

The ReefShark chipsets for compute capacity are delivered as plug-in units for the commercially available Nokia AirScale baseband module. AirScale is software upgradeable to full 5G functionality, and these plug-in units triple throughput from Nokia's already market-leading 28 Gbps today, to up to 84 Gbps per module. Additionally, AirScale baseband module chaining supports base station throughputs of up to 6 terabits per second, which will allow operators to meet the huge growing densification demands and support the massive enhanced mobile broadband needs of people and devices in megacities.

The Nokia 5G Future X portfolio includes  Nokia 5G New Radio - the radio software, based on the 3GPP 5G New Radio Release 15 standard; Nokia AirScale Radio Access - a modular way to build radio access networks delivering services with virtually unlimited capacity, scaling and market-leading latency and connectivity; Nokia's 5G AirScale active antennas - ideal for meeting the needs for 5G applications that require mobility support, wide-area coverage, multi-gigabit throughput speeds and millisecond latency; Nokia's 5G Small Cells; Nokia 5G Anyhaul - the portfolio is expanded for the 5G era with enhanced SDN automation capabilities and products for Microwave, IP Routing, Optical Networking, and Next Gen PON;  Nokia 5G Core - Nokia cloud-native packet core supports separated control and user planes and offers both virtualized and new physical deployment capabilities, including platforms built with Nokia's FP4 processor; Nokia Massive Scale Access - complements 5G New Radio with fiber, DSL, cable and Wireless PON solutions; and  5G Acceleration Services.

Nokia is working with 30 operators using ReefShark and will ramp up field deployments during the third quarter of 2018.