Despite recommendations to deploy real-time Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) applications (dApps) in containerized environments, existing approaches predominantly rely on bare-metal servers. Moreover, current dApp deployments offer limited visibility into the resource usage patterns of both intelligent and non-intelligent dApps, hindering informed deployment decisions. This work addresses these gaps by implementing and evaluating representative dApps across multiple deployment scenarios (bare-metal and containers) to characterize the trade-offs in latency, scalability, and resource utilization. Additionally, we identify key performance bottlenecks and demonstrate how offloading dApps to emerging hardware accelerators, such as smart Network Interface Cards (NICs), can alleviate these limitations and improve real-time responsiveness in O-RAN systems.

翻译：尽管建议在容器化环境中部署实时开放无线接入网络（O-RAN）应用（dApps），但现有方法主要依赖裸金属服务器。此外，当前dApp部署对智能与非智能dApps的资源使用模式可见性有限，阻碍了知情部署决策。本研究通过在多部署场景（裸金属与容器）中实现并评估代表性dApps来填补这些空白，以刻画延迟、可扩展性和资源利用率之间的权衡。此外，我们识别出关键性能瓶颈，并展示了将dApps卸载至新兴硬件加速器（如智能网卡）如何缓解这些限制并提升O-RAN系统的实时响应能力。