Nvidia, the largest microchip company in the world and the most valuable company overall, has announced a collaboration with several telecommunications operators – including Nokia and Ericsson – to develop 6G networks capable of managing artificial intelligence. The term 6G refers to sixth-generation mobile phone technologies that will replace the current standard, 5G.
WHY IS NVIDIA FOCUSING ON 6G?
Nvidia wants 6G infrastructures to be designed from the start to use and manage artificial intelligence features: it is a way to spread the use of this technology across various sectors of the “real” economy and secure additional markets for its products.
Currently, Nvidia’s processors, due to their high performance, are in great demand by tech groups involved in developing generative artificial intelligence, who are spending huge sums to acquire them and increase their computing power. However, financial markets have begun to wonder when all these investments will start to yield concrete economic returns.
A PARTNERSHIP WITH TELECOMMUNICATION OPERATORS
Nvidia has partnered, among others, with the American companies Cisco and Booz Allen, the British Bt Group, the German Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile, the Swedish Ericsson, the Finnish Nokia, and the Japanese SoftBank.
WHAT 6G NETWORKS WILL BE LIKE
According to Nvidia, 6G networks will not only have to handle connectivity in the strict sense but will have to become “the fabric for physical artificial intelligence,” that is, the infrastructure that will allow “billions” of autonomous vehicles, sensors, industrial robots, and various machinery to interact with each other: going far beyond smartphones, in short.
Current telecommunications networks were not designed to handle such a large and complex workload, especially regarding latency (response times, simply put) and data processing. Ronnie Vasishta, who leads Nvidia’s telecommunications division, said these infrastructures will have to become much more efficient because the available radio spectrum is limited: the same frequency bands for wireless communications, therefore, will have to be able to transmit much more data and manage numerous real-time interactions.
AN OPEN APPROACH
We are still in a very preliminary phase of 6G introduction, in which the technical specifications that will govern the functioning of components and software have not yet been defined. Companies, therefore, are moving – and the alliance formed by Nvidia is a demonstration of this – to try to steer the sector toward solutions favorable to them, as explained by Bloomberg.
Specifically, Nvidia is pushing for an “open” approach, for a 6G network based on updatable software running on standard computers. The company would like data traffic to be managed by an artificial intelligence program capable of dynamically adapting to evolving models and priorities.
