Nvidia announces AI-RAN innovation

The company also announced that SoftBank has piloted the world’s first AI and 5G telecom network, using its AI Aerial platform. The announcement was made at the Nvidia AI summit in Japan.

Discussing the latter technology, a spokesperson said: “Working closely with NVIDIA, SoftBank has achieved a technology milestone. [That is] the development of a new kind of telecommunications network that can run AI and 5G workloads at the same time, known by the industry as artificial intelligence radio access network, or AI-RAN.

“This new breed of infrastructure has broad ecosystem support from the telecom industry, as it offers operators the ability to transform their base stations from cost centres into AI revenue-producing assets.”

The spokesperson continued: “Through an outdoor trial conducted in the Kanagawa prefecture, SoftBank demonstrated that its NVIDIA-accelerated AI-RAN solution has achieved carrier-grade 5G performance and was able to do so while using the network’s excess capacity to run AI inference workloads concurrently.