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.
“Traditional telco networks are designed to handle peak loads and, on average, have used only one-third of that capacity. With the common computing capability provided by AI-RAN, it is expected that telcos now have the opportunity to monetise the remaining two-thirds capacity for AI inference services.”
Discussing the collaboration, Huang said: “Japan has a long history of pioneering technological innovations with global impact. With SoftBank’s significant investment in NVIDIA’s full-stack AI, Omniverse and 5G AI-RAN platforms, Japan is leaping into the AI industrial revolution to become a global leader."
“[It is] driving a new era of growth across the telecommunications, transportation, robotics and healthcare industries in ways that will greatly benefit humankind in the age of AI.”
President and CEO of SoftBank, Junichi Miyakawa, said: “Countries and regions worldwide are accelerating the adoption of AI for social and economic growth, and society is undergoing significant transformation.
“Through our long collaboration with NVIDIA, SoftBank is leading this transformation from the forefront. With our extremely powerful AI infrastructure and our new, distributed AI-RAN solution ‘AITRAS’ that reinvents 5G networks for AI, we will accelerate innovation across the country and throughout the world.”
