Nokia and University of Tampere in Finland team up to develop 5G chipset

Nokia has announced that it has teamed up with the University of Tampere to establish a “center of excellence” to enhance the development of custom processors for its ReefShark chipset SoCs.

The collaboration will also enhance Nokia’s chip design capabilities and the development of its own SoCs, with the center of excellence expected to open in November this year.

The purpose of the partnership is to accelerate the development of proprietary SoC chipsets, including their design and manufacturing, to improve time to market and establish a foundation for long-term SoC development capabilities and technology leadership. The joint venture will also reach an annual chip R&D plan with ecosystem partners.

Nokia will also explore areas such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and secure hardware development, as well as SoCs based on open source hardware. Nokia's global reach will support the University of Tampere's future research projects and guide their approach to training future engineers.

The project is supported by Business Finland through Nokia’s Veturi initiative, which works with industry partners and leading universities to promote industrial 5G and ecosystem development. Nokia has had a close partnership with the University of Tampere since the 2000s when the two partners established the Nokia Innovation Center.

Jyrki Vuorinen, Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences at the University of Tampere, said: “We are delighted to be working with Nokia to develop custom system-on-chip solutions for 5G infrastructure. This is an exciting joint project that accelerates chip innovation and ultimately enables operators to better enable 5G. We have already recruited a Professor of Practice and started the recruitment process for two international professor positions.”

Ari Kynaslahti, Head of Product Management at Nokia, said: “This important collaboration underscores our continued commitment to developing the ReefShark chipset portfolio and ensuring Nokia 5G solutions deliver best-in-class performance for our customers. We look forward to working closely with the University of Tampere on this exciting endeavor.”

Reefshark chipsets are used in wireless radio frequency units such as radios in antennas, which can significantly improve performance and halve the size of massive MIMO antennas. In addition, ReefShark chipsets can reduce power consumption by up to 64% compared to currently used baseband units.