Work that Nvidia and VMware are doing on acceleration for distributed computing could prove important in the bid to design off-the-shelf processors that are capable of supporting the demands of a distributed 5G macro vRAN. Along with other applications that require very high levels of processing power and very low latency, such as some AI workloads, or advanced security, the Layer 1 and 2 functions in a 5G vRAN put an enormous strain on processors. That has led to most RAN functions in early virtualized RANs remaining on the radio unit, or on a dedicated appliance. In the emerging architectures for vRAN and Open RAN, the distributed unit (DU) is designed to support Layer 2 and some Layer 1 functions,…