We have often analyzed, in Wireless Watch, the challenges that face operators, if they are serious about moving high performance RAN functions to run on general purpose processors (GPP), as part of the Open RAN drive. Now Vodafone has poured cold water on the idea that the whole 5G RAN baseband could run on standard silicon, at least in the short term. The operator says the more demanding elements of its first Open RANs, which will be deployed in western England, will not be able to run on Intel processors, and it is putting its weight behind development of alternatives based on ARM processor architectures, which would be optimized for far lower power consumption. Intel has incumbent position in first…