By Light Reading
Publication Date: 2026-06-15 07:30:00
Ericsson’s investors were in a flap last week as news of Nvidia’s latest plans sent the Swedish 5G company’s share price down 6% on June 9. The giant American chipmaker had already urged 5G radio access network (RAN) vendors to use its graphics processing units (GPUs), made famous by the generative AI boom, instead of their purpose-built silicon. GPUs, it insists, have advantages over custom silicon for RAN compute, the processing that happens mainly in appliances and servers. It is now aiming its GPUs at high-end radio units (RUs) as well, sources close to the matter have revealed. The market worries what that could mean for Ericsson’s business.
Officially, Nvidia has neither confirmed nor denied that RU products are planned. It has, however, said that anticipated 6G developments would make the inclusion of GPUs in more advanced RUs “essential.” Massive MIMO, a sophisticated antenna technology expected to be more widely used in 6G, splits some of the processing between the RU and a baseband appliance or server, called a “distributed unit” (DU) by the industry. Using the same silicon platform on either side is likely to simplify development. And DUs were already the target of Nvidia’s AI-RAN strategy. Not having an RU plan would, to some experts, make Nvidia look myopic.
The probable concern for Ericsson’s investors is that GPU-based RUs will dislodge the company’s own application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), putting a further dent in hardware sales and undermining…
