US 12,113,678 B2 · Using hypervisor to provide virtual hardware accelerators in an O-RAN system

Abstract

Some embodiments provide various methods for offloading operations in an O-RAN (Open Radio Access Network) onto control plane (CP) or edge applications that execute on host computers with hardware accelerators in software defined datacenters (SDDCs). At the CP or edge application operating on a machine executing on a host computer with a hardware accelerator, the method of some embodiments receives data, from an O-RAN E2 unit, to perform an operation. The method uses a driver of the machine to communicate directly with the hardware accelerator to direct the hardware accelerator to perform a set of computations associated with the operation. This driver allows the communication with the hardware accelerator to bypass an intervening set of drivers executing on the host computer between the machine's driver and the hardware accelerator. Through this driver, the application in some embodiments receives the computation results, which it then provides to one or more O-RAN components (e.g., to the E2 unit that provided the data, another E2 unit or another control plane or edge application).

Claims19

Dependent claims

A method of performing operations in an O-RAN (Open Radio Access Network), the method comprising:

deploying a virtualization application on a host computer for sharing resources of the host computer among a plurality of machines executing on the host computer with a first set of one or more physical hardware accelerators;
deploying a plurality of applications on the plurality of the machines to perform a plurality of operations for a set of components in the O-RAN, the plurality of applications comprising a first application;
through the virtualization application, defining a second set of a plurality of virtual hardware accelerators that are implemented by the first set of physical hardware accelerators, the plurality of virtual hardware accelerators comprising a first virtual hardware accelerator;
assigning the first virtual hardware accelerator to the first application;
configuring the first application to use the first virtual hardware accelerator to perform an operation;
wherein the plurality of machines comprises a first machine, the first machine comprises a first hardware accelerator driver configured to communicate directly with the first virtual hardware accelerator to bypass an intervening set of drivers executing on the host computer.

3 more elements

A non-transitory machine readable medium storing a program which when executed by at least one processing unit performs operations in an O-RAN (Open Radio Access Network), the program comprising sets of instructions for:

deploying a virtualization application on a host computer for sharing resources of the host computer among a plurality of machines executing on the host computer with a first set of one or more physical hardware accelerators;
deploying a plurality of applications on the plurality of the machines to perform a plurality of operations for a set of components in the O-RAN, the plurality of applications comprising a first application;
through the virtualization application, defining a second set of a plurality of virtual hardware accelerators that are implemented by the first set of physical hardware accelerators, the plurality of virtual hardware accelerators comprising a first virtual hardware accelerator;
assigning the first virtual hardware accelerator to the first application;
configuring the first application to use the first virtual hardware accelerator to perform an operation;
and
wherein the plurality of machines comprises a first machine, the first machine comprises a first hardware accelerator driver configured to communicate directly with the first virtual hardware accelerator to bypass an intervening set of drivers executing on the host computer.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Using hypervisor to provide virtual hardware accelerators in an O-RAN system

Life of this patent

Using hypervisor to provide virtual hardware accelerators in an O-RAN system

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims19