Even the most powerful semiconductor companies will find the 5G waters turbulent in 2021. At long last, major network equipment vendors are starting to move away from designing their own proprietary infrastructure chips (single purpose ASICs, mainly) and embracing the more attractive economics of merchant processors. This has been driven by the need to be increasingly price-competitive, but also by the beginnings of the operators’ gradual migration to a cloud-based RAN. This creates a significant opportunity for chip vendors, which for the first time could address the macro RAN market, just as it is experiencing a growth spurt driven by 5G and virtualized RAN (vRAN) deployments. Suppliers from different markets are converging, creating a stand-off between companies from the server…