Energy efficiency is often touted as a benefit of Open RAN technologies, though many of the claims really relate to virtualized RAN (vRAN), which can be open or not. The energy efficiency claims for vRAN derive from the ability to share network functions between many cell sites, moving resources between the sites as traffic patterns change rather than having to equip every site for peak loads. However, the more operators talk about implementing demanding 5G network functions on COTS servers, the more the dark side of the vRAN power argument looms. Even Nvidia, which is working on processors that would be capable of supporting the demanding processing requirements of 5G Layer 1 tasks, has acknowledged that, while its designs can…