As the major RAN vendors develop virtualized platforms, they have been forced to engage in a significant reassessment of their base station chip strategies. The economics of the cloud-based network give them the opportunity to save cost by adopting general purpose processors (GPP) from Intel or an ARM partner; though general purpose architectures also rob them of the differentiation they had while still designing many of their chips inhouse or through captive semiconductor vendors. But as Nokia’s U-turn on its 5G base station silicon showed late last year, the cost advantages of merchant, partially off-the-shelf solutions are hard to ignore. But some RAN processes remain beyond the capabilities of current GPP and must be supported with specialist, even proprietary chips;…