Enea announced a partnership with chipmaker Ampere to develop Arm-based universal CPE appliances for use in telecom and edge applications. Under the partnership, Enea will pair Ampere's first-generation eMAG processors with its NFV Access platform, which provides an environment on which to run virtual network functions (VNFs) like those for SD-WAN.

Matt Taylor, SVP of worldwide sales and business development at Ampere, explained in a statement that the deal will help to meet the need for scalable, low power, and cost-efficient uCPE hardware.

Ampere's 16-core 8140 eMAG processors are based on the Arm v8-A architecture and offer peak processing speeds of 3.3 GHz at a 75-watt thermal design power (TDP). For uCPE applications requiring higher core counts, Ampere's 8180 chips offer double the core count with a 125-watt TDP.

Enea claims that by using Arm-based processors it can pack more cores into uCPE appliances increasing the overall performance at a given price point.

"There is great potential for carrier networks in the 5G era, but that potentially goes untapped without a platform in place that is powerful, efficient, and offers flexibility," said Mohamed Awad, VP of marketing for Arm's infrastructure division, in a statement.

Today's announcement marks the latest win for Arm chipmakers like Ampere and Marvell.

Ampere has been on a mission to displace traditional x86-based hardware with its line of Arm-based processors. Earlier this month, the chipmaker announced the Ampere Altra, an 80-core data center chip designed to compete with rival Intel in the hyperscale, public cloud, and edge environments.

Meanwhile, Nokia and Samsung announced plans to use Marvell's latest generation of Arm-based Octeon Fusion chips in their 5G radio access network (RAN) equipment.