According to informed Japanese officials, SoftBank and Nvidia will jointly establish a new industry association dedicated to the practical application of technology that utilizes mobile communication base stations to decentralize artificial intelligence processing.
It is reported that this new industry group will be named the "AI-RAN Alliance", and about 10 global companies such as telecommunications giants Ericsson and Nokia will also participate in it, aiming to achieve global standardization of the technology.
Through decentralized processing, AI processing can be carried out without the need for large-scale data centers, and high-quality AI services can be provided on smartphones.
On the other hand, by adding AI functions to base stations, it is possible to automate the control of multiple base stations, solving the problem of poor connection caused by concentrated calls and communication at specific base stations.
In fact, how to improve network performance and user experience in today's dense network? For LTE and 5G operators, artificial intelligence has become one of the key challenges to overcome. The development and trends of "AI-RAN" technology have been introduced on Ericsson's official website.
As people's interest and investment in artificial intelligence reach a frenzy, Nvidia has become an undisputed leader in the field of AI chips, and its GPU technology plays an important role in AI training and inference.
Last May, Nvidia and SoftBank jointly announced that they were working together to create a groundbreaking platform based on the NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper superchip, targeting generative AI and 5G/6G applications. SoftBank plans to adopt this platform in new distributed AI data centers across Japan.
Compared to previous data centers, these new data centers will be more evenly distributed and able to handle both AI and 5G workloads simultaneously. This will enable them to better maintain peak operation while maintaining low latency and significantly reducing overall energy costs.
Junichi Miyakawa, President and CEO of SoftBank, once said, "As we enter an era where society coexists with AI, the demand for data processing and electricity will continue to grow. SoftBank will provide the next generation of social infrastructure to support Japan's super digital society. Collaboration with Nvidia will help our infrastructure leverage AI to achieve higher performance, including optimization of RAN.". We look forward to this also helping us reduce energy consumption, create an interconnected data center network for sharing resources and hosting a range of generative AI applications