Cavium announced an extensive collaboration on 4G/LTE (News - Alert) radio access and evolved packet core (EPC) solutions with global innovation and technology services company Aricent.

In a release YJ Kim (News - Alert), General Manager, Infrastructure Processor Group at Cavium Inc said, “Aricent (News - Alert) has a successful track record providing mobile communications technology and services to the world's leading infrastructure manufacturers. We are pleased to see Aricent’s EPC and eNodeB frameworks optimized for Cavium’s market-leading OCTEON processors delivering a robust, carrier grade solution for our joint customers.”

This collaboration is expected to provide highly-scalable EPC Frameworks and LTE eNodeB base station protocol software stacks for Cavium’s OCTEON II Multi-core and the OCTEON Fusion “Base-station-on-a-chip” processor families. Cavium specializes in providing semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for networking, communications and the digital home.

According to Cavium sources this joint effort will equip LTE equipment manufacturers with a high-capacity solution for their eNodeB and EPC platforms. Besides, the partnership can reduce interoperability risk, development cost and time to market.

Aricent’s LTE EPC frameworks consist of pre-integrated and pre-optimized Mobility Management Entity (MME), serving gateway, Packet DataNetwork (PDN) Gateway (News - Alert), Home Subscriber Server (HSS) and Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) components that can offer support to small to large-scale subscriber deployments.

Also Aricent 3GPP Release 9/10 standards compliant EPC frameworks integrate all EPC functions such as control, data and management into a seamless package. This in turn accelerates and simplifies the development of highly scalable, carrier-class EPC solutions across small to large deployments.

Officials at Aricent revealed that its LTE EPC framework is pre-optimized for Cavium OCTEON Processors. The company’s 3GPP compliant LTE eNodeB framework integrates complete Layer 2 and Layer 3+ functionality in a software package that serves as a robust reference platform on OCTEON Fusion. This allows the development of complete LTE eNodeB solutions resulting in a framework that offers clear interfaces for equipment manufacturers. They can now incorporate new features to differentiate their products.

Rakesh Vij, vice president of business development, wireless and convergence for Aricent said, “We are delighted to partner with Cavium to provide our complete LTE software solution on the OCTEON Fusion SoC, which delivers one of the highest small cell performances in the industry. By bringing together Cavium’s semiconductor expertise with Aricent’s software frameworks, we are able to provide a comprehensive solution that simplifies development complexity and accelerates time to market for LTE infrastructure providers.”