Marvell’s baseband processor silicon will power some of Fujitsu’s forthcoming 5G equipment, the companies announced today. 

Fujitsu, which has strong operator support in its home market of Japan and aspires to grow globally, plans to use Marvell’s Octeon Fusion baseband processors for its 5G micro cells and open radio access network (RAN) distributed units.

Marvell specifically designed its Octeon TX2 processor for RAN infrastructure, including tightly integrated base stations or 5G distributed units, and released the products in March 2020. The chipmaker also claims it can match the performance of an ASIC and therefore provides RAN vendors an alternative to developing an ASIC in-house. 

Fujitsu’s purchase of Marvell silicon will be of particular interest to operators awaiting delivery of the vendor's 5G open RAN equipment, especially if this factors into gear that will be shipped this year.

Dish Network inked a contract with Fujitsu in mid-2020 for what it described as a “large purchase” of low- and mid-band 5G open RAN compliant radios. The delivery of that equipment is late, according to Dish. During Dish’s earnings call earlier this week, the company’s chairman and co-founder Charlie Ergen said the yet-to-be-realized supply of radios from Fujitsu is mostly responsible for its delayed 5G deployment activities.

“We’ve already had some delays in that and we’re pretty confident but until the factory production is spitting it out and we get to see it with our own eyes, we’ll see, but the cadence looks pretty good,” Ergen said. 

The greenfield network operator as recently as last summer maintained it would have 5G service in a single market before the end of 2020, but now it claims it won’t have the necessary supply of radios from its vendors until this summer.

Fujitsu was included in Gartner’s latest 5G vendor ranking as a “niche” player and was recognized for its proactive and growing participation in open RAN, but the firm warned that a major reorganization at the company could negatively impact business support and continuity. 

The vendor’s RAN business is very focused on and customized for the Japanese market, but it’s making moves to expand globally by selling 5G base stations based on open RAN and virtualized RAN (vRAN), according to Gartner.

“The company is riding the momentum of open RAN and gaining recognition,” the analysts wrote.

“Marvell’s baseband technology allows us to develop a variety of RAN solutions that can address the needs of network operators, regardless of the network topology being deployed,” Masaki Taniguchi, SVP and head of Fujitsu’s Mobile System Business unit, said in a statement.