Casa Systems, Dell Technologies and Intel collaborate on a scale-up/scale-down approach to 5G core power management that doesn’t impact network performance

Whatever the 5G use case is, one of the results for operators is the need to serve more throughput per subscriber. At the same time, operators have committed to net-zero goals, and are otherwise looking to cut costs associated with power consumption. During Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Dell Technologies, alongside partners at Casa Systems and Intel, demonstrated how dynamic power management can scale power consumption up or down to meet ever-changing throughput demand more economically. 

Casa Systems Director of Product Management Ram Rajagopalan explained: “Power management becomes extremely critical especially in 5G use cases that are highly throughput-intensive. Most operators are kind of saturated on the subscribers, but the per subscriber throughput is increasing…driven primarily by many use cases that are video-intensive, audio-intensive and virtual/augmented reality-intensive.” 

His demo combined Casa’s 5G core user plane function (UPF) running on the Dell PowerEdge R760 server and using Intel Infrastructure Power Manager software that can be installed on existing and future Xeon-based network infrastructure. 

This helps operators better align their resources with the reality that the network doesn’t need to be ready to serve peak demand around the clock. “The traffic is not a constant throughout the entire 24-hour…period,” Rajagopalan said. “There are busy hours and there are many lean hours. But the power consumption remains a constant even if there is not much throughput across the UPF.” 

With the approach highlighted in the demo, “Depending on throughput, the power consumption goes down,” he said; specifically, power consumption goes down around 29% per CPU per year. In the context of a data center with thousands of CPUs, “This leads to significant power savings. And that leads to a lower cost of ownership, lower operational costs and, most importantly, lower carbon footprint.”