As argued in the editorial above, the support of large-scale chip vendors is a critical enabler of affordable open networks platforms. There are many interesting initiatives, some focused on open source architectures such as RISC-V, but once companies look beyond private or small cell networks and towards the high performance 5G vRAN, many challenges arise. It is clear that considerable development and funding will be needed to deliver an open semiconductor platform that can perform even the most demanding Layer 1 and 2 RAN tasks to the same level as the major equipment vendors’ inhouse architectures. It is encouraging for the open RAN community, then, to see big names such as Intel and Marvell supporting this drive. Nokia’s missteps with…