Ampere accelerates expansion into telecom networking processors

Ampere is accelerating its expansion from Arm-based server processors for AI processing into networking chips for the telecom market.

The company unveiled the ampere Altra Family of processors uniquely suited to address growing market
Ampere announced today that it is accelerating its effort to address the telecom market, bringing
its high-performance, energy-efficient processors to next-generation RAN networks.

With the rapid expansion of 5G, edge computing and AI-driven workloads, the company said it is seizing a major market opportunity by enabling telecom providers to meet growing performance demands while lowering costs and energy use.

According to Grandview Research, the global telecom services market size is estimated to reach $1.9 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.5% from 2025 to 2030.

“Rising spending on the deployment of 5G infrastructures due to the shift in customer inclination toward next-generation technologies and smartphone devices is one of the key factors driving this industry,” Grandview said.

Ampere said its processors provide numerous advantages for the telecom market due to their high core density, energy efficiency and scalability, which support the industry’s growing need for high-performance and low power. Low power consumption and efficient thermal design make Ampere-
based platforms ideal for a variety of edge form factors found in telecom network infrastructure.

They help lower operational costs, a key benefit for telcos managing large-scale deployments across many regions with unpredictable and rising energy costs.

Because of this strong product fit, Ampere is strengthening its presence in the telecom sector to capitalize on this significant market opportunity. The company views this market as a natural extension of the Cloud Native workloads it already supports today, delivering Ampere’s benefits to the edge and across distributed networks.

Securing new customers

Today, Ampere is announcing new trials with global telecom customers as it expands its reach in
this market.

Ampere and Parallel Wireless are collaborating on the deployment of the Parallel Wireless
GreenRANTM Hardware-Agnostic cloud-native Distributed Unit (DU) stack for 5G SA, 5G NSA,
4G and 2G, which will be the first stack to commercialize a comprehensive portfolio of
cellular network technologies on Ampere.

By collaborating with Parallel Wireless—which offers a hardware-agnostic All G (2G/4G/5G NSA/5G SA) solution—Ampere further expands its Open RAN supply chain reach. This partnership combines Ampere’s energy-efficient processors with Parallel Wireless’s GreenRANTM hardware-agnostic DU, enabling operators to support multiple network generations on a single, flexible infrastructure. The result is a high-performing system that significantly reduces power usage and lowers total cost of ownership (TCO).

Netanel Gabizon, Parallel Wireless chief product officer, said in a statement, “This collaboration will enable the first fully software-based cloud native, carrier-grade, All G solution targeting Ampere platforms. It demonstrates Parallel Wireless’ ongoing commitment to secure, innovative and more energy efficient networks.”

Advancing existing ecosystem partnerships

To enable its telecom customers, Ampere has also broadened the ecosystem of providers and suppliers using or supporting Ampere products. Today, the company is announcing multiple advancements through collaboration with a variety of foundational partners in all aspects of the ORAN solution stacks. The collective set of partners are now ready for production deployments throughout the ORAN market within the calendar year 2025.

Supermicro Ampere-based ARS-210ME-FNR short-depth telecom platforms are now in qualification for carrier trials.

“Supermicro’s Ampere Arm-based MegaDC platforms are a state-of-the-art advancement for its cutting-edge power-efficient design for sustainable next generation cloud-native 5G networks,” said Michael Clegg, VP of 5G/Edge at Supermicro, in a statement. “The ARS-210ME-FNR short-depth telecom platforms are now in qualification for carrier trials and support expansion to the densest massive MIMO metro environments. Supermicro’s expanding portfolio of telecom products are ideally suited for 5G, Telco, and edge solutions for cloud-based open RAN applications including AI.”

SynaXG, a leading provider of baseband O-RAN software, offers full support for Ampere
Arm-based vDU solutions in commercial telecom deployments. Its comprehensive suite of
RAN software and hardware accelerator card adheres to the 3GPP standards, ensuring a
robust feature set that meets the evolving demands of today’s 4G and 5G networks.
SynaXG vDU products have been fully qualified for production on Ampere Supermicro
platforms, further solidifying their readiness for large-scale commercial implementation.

“As a leading provider of O-RAN solutions, SynaXG is committed to delivering Ampere best-
in-class, carrier-grade software, tools, and support to accelerate the implementation of Ampere’s platform,” said Mantosh Malhotra, chief business officer at SynaXG, in a statement. “Our RAN software, fully compliant with the latest 3GPP standards and O-RAN specifications, ensures optimized network performance and energy efficiency – an ideal match for the Ampere platform and the evolving needs of today’s 5G networks.”

Fujitsu has now delivered its innovative 5G virtualized network services stack with O-RAN Alliance compliant interfaces for trials beginning in early 2025 based on the low power Ampere platform, cementing their commitment to deliver sustainable virtualized RAN solutions in 2025. Ampere is working with Fujitsu for the first time to enable this stack.

“We are very pleased to announce the availability of our 5G virtualized RAN solution for 5G commercial services based on sustainable, low power Ampere Arm-based infrastructure. Fujitsu’s embrace of open network architecture is central to our ongoing efforts to develop high-quality and secure mobile solutions, contributing to cost effective and sustainable services for our valued global telecommunications customers,” said Masaki Taniguchi, head of the mobile system business unit at Fujitsu, in a statement.

Building on the existing partnership between Ampere Computing and SUSE for the enterprise Linux market, SUSE’s horizontal telco cloud platform has been fully validated for RAN use cases on Ampere-based aarch64 servers from Supermicro.

This joint work also enables Parallel Wireless’ energy-efficient GreenRAN solutions to flexibly manage,
optimize and process data securely, while significantly reducing total cost of ownership for service operators.

“When we started our partnership with Parallel Wireless, we could build on a fair amount of already existing hardware enablement for Ampere-based hardware platforms due to our established collaboration with Ampere Computing for other industry segments,” said Tim Irnich, distinguished product manager edge for telco at SUSE, in a statement. “After integrating a couple of additional kernel patches, we saw really good performance and power efficiency for RAN workloads on Ampere CPUs without requiring a lot of performance tuning. The support of Arm-based hardware is a core pillar of SUSE’s telco strategy due to the undeniable advantages in terms of core density and power efficiency, and we are very happy to see our related investments bear fruit.”

Canonical’s cloud-native software stack runs on Ampere silicon as a fully upstream open-source solution with 12 year LTS, providing secure, low-touch and energy efficient edge clouds for telco networks. Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, provides end-to-end solutions for Open RAN and 5G deployments on Arm-based platforms. Canonical’s solutions include bare metal provisioning, systems management, automation tooling, Ubuntu server with real-time kernel, Canonical Kubernetes and AI/ML tooling for AI-RAN operations.

“Canonical is committed to enabling telco innovation with scalable, secure, and optimized solutions on Arm-based platforms,” said Ivan Ramos, global head of telco at Canonical, in a statement. “Through our partnership with Ampere, we leverage Ubuntu certified platforms to deliver exceptional performance, reduced TCO, and accelerated time-to-market, enabling seamless deployment of ORAN and 5G infrastructure for next-generation telecom networks.”

With an expanding ecosystem of partners now delivering Ampere-based products and services, Ampere is capitalizing on the immense opportunities in the telecom market. As telcos evolve to support 5G, Cloud Native networks and AI-driven applications, Ampere’s high-performance, power-efficient solutions offer a strategic advantage. By enabling telecom operators to optimize performance and lower energy and operating costs, Ampere is well-positioned to lead the industry’s transition to more efficient and scalable telecom infrastructure.