Marvell Technology Group Ltd. said Monday that Facebook would use its chips to make it “easier and cheaper” to deploy 5G, reported Reuters. As a way to “disrupt” the handful of major players supplying the 5G marketplace, Facebook has been vying for “open radio-access networks” (hardware and software) to lower costs.
According to Reuters, Facebook has focused on developing software for the open networks while partnering with companies for the hardware components; this includes the Marvell project, a circuit board design known as a “distributed unit,” or DU. The DU will sit near the bottom of a cell tower to crunch data coming in through the tower’s radio units.
Marvell’s DU design will be free for telecommunications companies to use and contain the company’s processors. The objective is to simplify the process of getting networks up and running.
“What we are designing for Facebook is a system that anyone, in the fullness of time, can deploy,” said Raj Singh, executive vice president of the processors business group at Marvell.
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