Mentor Graphics, a Siemens business, will join the Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) Alliance, the company said.
O-RAN Alliance was formed by global telecom service providers and ecosystem suppliers to promote openness, intelligence, flexibility and performance in the evolution of 5G radio access network (RAN) architectures and orchestration.
South Korean telcos SK Telecom and KT as well as their US counterparts Verizon and AT&T are members.
As an alliance member, Mentor will focus on verification and validation requirements for open standards-based, highly-configurable network development, it said.
“While there are many challenges to building the products that comprise 5G networks, testing is the key to success,” said Joe Sawicki, executive vice president for Mentor’s IC Segment, said in a staement. “Mentor’s comprehensive silicon verification flow is ideally suited to help O-RAN and its members meet their goal of dramatically streamlining interoperability validation cycles for 5G deployments around the globe.”
O-RAN encourages collaboration among a large group of companies, enabling them to build the best, most cost-effective 5G products, Mentor said. The most important is Systems-on-chip (SoCs), which must be verified within the context of the overall 5G systems they will power. Mentor will also offer support in validating silicons for 5G networks, it added.
