IT House reported on November 13 that at yesterday’s NVIDIA AI Summit Japan 2024, NVIDIA announced a series of cooperation with SoftBank, aiming to accelerate Japan’s AI plans while releasing billions of dollars for global telecommunications providers. AI revenue opportunities.
Nvidia revealed that SoftBank is using the Nvidia AI Aerial accelerated computing platform to successfully pilot the world's first telecom network combining AI and 5G , saying "This is a breakthrough in the computing field and brings potential value data to telecom operators. Billion-Dollar AI Revenue Stream”.
SoftBank President and CEO Junichi Miyagawa said: "Countries and regions around the world are accelerating the adoption of AI to promote social and economic growth, and society is undergoing major changes. Through our long-term cooperation with NVIDIA, SoftBank is leading this change. With our extremely With powerful AI infrastructure and the new distributed AI-RAN solution 'AITRAS' that reshapes 5G networks for AI, we will accelerate innovation across the country and around the world."
According to reports, SoftBank has worked closely with Nvidia to achieve a technical milestone - the development of a new telecommunications network that can run AI and 5G workloads simultaneously, which is called the Artificial Intelligence Radio Access Network (AI-RAN) by the industry . This new infrastructure is supported by the telecom industry ecosystem as it enables operators to transform base stations from cost centers into AI revenue-generating assets.
Through outdoor trials in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture, SoftBank demonstrated that its AI-RAN solution has achieved carrier-grade 5G performance and is able to leverage the network's excess capacity to run AI inference workloads simultaneously .
Nvidia and SoftBank estimate that for every US$1 invested in AI-RAN infrastructure, telecom operators can obtain approximately US$5 (IT House Note: currently approximately 36.2 yuan) in AI inference revenue. Taking into account opex and capex costs, SoftBank estimates that it can earn a return of up to 219% for each AI-RAN server added to its infrastructure.