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Qualcomm continues to be an enterprise leader when it comes to the 5G ecosystem and its recently announced collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprises is expected to bring the next generation of 5G distributed units to enterprises as the needs for 5G deployment continue to grow.

The units are being run through Qualcomm’s new inline accelerator card, the X100 5G RAN. This collaboration introduces the industry’s first fully optimized virtualized distributed unit (vDU) solution with up to 60% lower total cost of ownership for operators. Together, the companies aim to improve user experiences by helping ready virtualized and open RAN platforms to support the high-capacity and low-latency workloads of future networks.

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“HPE is looking forward to collaborating with Qualcomm Technologies to help address the rigorous and ever-changing demands of 5G,” Tom Craig, Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s general manager and vice president of its communications technology group, said in a press release. “Our industry-leading HPE carrier-grade infrastructure integrated with Qualcomm Technologies’ innovative technology will further benefit our customers as they expand the deployment of their 5G networks.”

Due to the increasing demands of enterprise networks as employees both return to in-office work while some continue to work remotely, the joint venture is hoping to address the next-generation of needs when it comes to fully utilizing 5G. Additionally, the collaboration is expected to simplify deployments and lower TCO by delivering a high functioning, open radio access network (O-RAN) with energy-efficient, virtualized and cloud-native 5G solutions. Qualcomm’s 5G expertise when paired with HPE’s communications infrastructure is hoping to assist businesses with ensuring virtualized and open RAN platforms are ready to support the high-capacity and low-latency demands of future networks that are needed to strengthen user experiences.

“We are excited for the opportunity to work with HPE to further the capabilities and efficiencies of 5G virtualized networks,” said Durga Malladi, senior vice president and general manager of 5G, mobile broadband and infrastructure at Qualcomm in the announcement. “Through our collaboration with HPE, we are able to deliver enhanced, powerful and reliable 5G experiences to consumers.”

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The 5G RAN vDU combines the use of Qualcomm’s X100 5G RAN inline accelerator card with HPE’s ProLiant DL110 Gen10 Plus Telco server to deliver the industry’s first fully optimized vDU. The system is designed to support up to four high-performance accelerator cards while remaining energy efficient in a 1U server, which lowers power consumption. According to a comprehensive joint study by HPE and Qualcomm Technologies, operators will lower TCO by up to 60% across 5G deployments.

Qualcomm’s X100 5G RAN inline accelerator card was created specifically for this collaboration, and is designed to deliver a highly efficient, low-latency, and energy efficient solution to the growing 5G needs of many enterprises. The solution is expected to enable cloud-native and virtualized 5G networks deployments by offloading server CPUs from compute-intensive 5G baseband processing as network operators currently face the difficult challenge of deploying cost-effective 5G network infrastructure, while at the same time addressing the complexities of next-generation networks.

With this joint venture between Qualcomm and HPE, the two companies are aiming to change the way networks are designed and deployed while moving into the next phase of service delivery.