Marvell OCTEON DPU joins Evenstar program to expand OpenRAN ecosystem

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: MRVL), a leader in infrastructure semiconductor solutions, today announced that it will join Facebook Connectivity in the Evenstar program to provide Evenstar with a 4G/5G OpenRAN distributed unit (DU) design. The design is based on the industry-leading OCTEON Fusion® baseband processor and uses Arm-based OCTEON® multi-core digital processing units (DPUs). The Evenstar-DU design will help the next generation of RAN suppliers to provide high-performance, low-cost, interoperable DU products for the rapidly expanding OpenRAN ecosystem.

Marvell's DU reference board features an OCTEON Fusion-O baseband, supports 4G and 5G PHY layer processing, and is paired with an OCTEON DPU to run software. Facebook Connectivity will work with Marvell to enable software operations to be incorporated into the solution and encourage multiple third parties to port the same protocol stack software. At 100 MHz channelization, the DU supports up to 16 downlink layers and has 10 Gbps downlink and 5 Gbps uplink performance. The purpose is to make the Evenstar DU device fully ready for network operator testing next year.

The Evenstar program requires collaboration, and its main purpose is to build a common RAN reference system architecture for 4G and 5G networks in the OpenRAN ecosystem. Following the successful introduction of radio unit (RU) design in 2020, Evenstar will focus on DU design as the second key OpenRAN solution. By decoupling RU, DU, and control unit (CU) functions and ensuring interoperability between products from different vendors, mobile network operators can choose high-quality components and flexibly deploy the best solution to meet their needs.

“Marvell’s commitment to OpenRAN was demonstrated in December 2020 with the launch of the O-RAN platform based on our industry-leading OCTEON Fusion architecture,” said Raj Singh, executive vice president of Marvell’s processor business group. “We recognize that collaboration is a key element to success, such as our work with Facebook Connectivity and other partners on the Evenstar DU project, which is critical to our platform and the industry as a whole. We look forward to delivering higher performance and more cost-effective DU designs to help operators deploy versatile next-generation Internet to provide the capacity they need and meet their interoperability requirements.”

Jaydeep Ranade, Director of Wireless Engineering at Facebook Connectivity, said, "We are very pleased that Marvell's DU design has a positive impact on the entire Evenstar program. Marvell's rich experience in baseband and DPU processors complements Evenstar's strengths. Therefore, we will work together to accelerate the global popularization and application of high-performance innovative OpenRAN solutions."