Nokia has struggled with slower than expected development of its Reefshark system on chips (SoC), which allow a single chip to carry an entire computer system, enabling Nokia to produce equipment more cheaply.

“Nokia is working with multiple partners to support its ReefShark family of chipsets, which are used in many base station elements”, the Finnish firm said.

Industry observers are wondering at the move Intel has an almost comical history of trying and failing to introduce its significantly hotter and more power hungry x86 architecture-based chips into the mobile space. The concept of Intel looking to do anything faster than the speed of a tardy glacier has some of us bemused. Still some of that collaboration is on the server side, where Intel and x86 is still at the forefront so Nokia’s move might make some sense.

Of the Marvell partnership, Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said: “This important announcement highlights our continued commitment to expanding the variety and utilization of ReefShark chipsets in our portfolio. This ensures that our 5G solutions are equipped to deliver best-in-class performance to our customers. As service providers continue to evolve their 5G plans and support growing traffic and new vertical services, the infrastructure and components must evolve rapidly. Adopting the latest advancements in silicon technology is a critical step to better serve our customers’ needs.”

Of Intel, Uitto said: “This partnership highlights our continued commitment to ensuring our 5G portfolio is underpinned by best-in-class technology. 5G networks need to support billions of devices and machines, and this massive increase in volume and scale means that existing infrastructure and components must evolve rapidly, adopting technologies and techniques to enable to deploy 5G networks quickly.”