Nokia today welcomed Broadcom into its network of semiconductor partners. Broadcom will develop custom system-on-chip processors for Nokia's emerging 5G ReefShark portfolio.

“We are excited to partner with Nokia to develop and deploy highly integrated custom silicon solutions for 5G infrastructure," said Frank Ostojic, SVP of Broadcom's ASIC products division, in a statement. "Nokia and Broadcom’s collaboration accelerates silicon innovation and enables operators and end-users to realize the unprecedented benefits of 5G.”

Announced in 2018, ReefShark is based on two architectures. The first is focused on compute capacity while the second addresses radio frequency applications. Both include artificial intelligence from Nokia Bell Labs.

Broadcom is the latest chipmaker to join forces with Nokia to help build out its ReefShark AirScale radio access portfolio. To date, Nokia has announced plans to use Intel and Marvell's base station chips in its ReefShark AirScale modules.

From Intel, Nokia is using the Atom P5900. Unveiled in February, the 10-nanometer base station chip is designed specifically for use in radio access networks (RAN).

Nokia is also using Marvell's Octeon Fusion infrastructure processors, announced in March. The Octeon Fusion is built off of Marvell's Octeon TX2 chip, and adds dedicated Layer-1 processing capabilities, making it ideal for use in base stations. Marvell's chips can also be customized to incorporate customer intellectual property.

According to Nokia, these chips, alongside the contributions from Broadcom, will form the building blocks of its AirScale RAN offering.