Nvidia takes 5G to the edge with help from Ericsson and Red Hat

Graphics chip maker Nvidia has unveiled its EGX Edge Supercomputing Platform that is designed to boost 5G, IoT and AI processing at the edge of the network

Nvidia has long been the market leader in GPUs (graphics processing units), which has enabled it to get a strong position in supercomputing, where the parallel processing qualities of GPUs come in especially handy. This EGX initiative seems to be Nvidia’s attempt to translate that position from datacentres to the edge computing.

“We’ve entered a new era, where billions of always-on IoT sensors will be connected by 5G and processed by AI,” said Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO. “Its foundation requires a new class of highly secure, networked computers operated with ease from far away. We’ve created the Nvidia EGX Edge Supercomputing Platform for this world, where computing moves beyond personal and beyond the cloud to operate at planetary scale.”

There seems to be a fair bit of support for this new platform, with a bunch of companies and even a couple of US cities saying they’re already involved. “Samsung has been an early adopter of both GPU computing and AI from the beginning,” said Charlie Bae, EVP of foundry sales and marketing at Samsung Electronics. “NVIDIA’s EGX platform helps us to extend these manufacturing and design applications smoothly onto our factory floors.”

“At Walmart, we’re using AI to define the future of retail and re-think how technology can further enhance how we operate our stores,” said Mike Hanrahan, CEO of Walmart Intelligent Retail Lab. “With NVIDIA’s EGX edge computing platform, Walmart’s Intelligent Retail Lab is able to bring real-time AI compute to our store, automate processes and free up our associates to create a better and more convenient shopping experience for our customers.”

On the mobile side Ericsson is getting involved to build virtualized 5G RANs on GPUs. As you would expect the reason is all about being able to introduce new functions and services more easily and flexibly. More specifically Ericsson hopes the platform will make virtualizing the complete RAN solution cheaper and easier.

“5G is set to turbocharge the intelligent edge revolution,” said Huang. “Fusing 5G, supercomputing, and AI has enabled us to create a revolutionary communications platform supporting, someday, trillions of always-on, AI-enabled smart devices. Combining our world-leading capabilities, Nvidia and Ericsson are helping to invent this exciting future.”

On the software side a key partner for all this virtualized 5G fun will be Red Hat, which is getting its OpenShift Kubernetes container platform involved. It will combine with Nvidia’s own Aerial software developer kit to help operators to make the kind of software-defined RAN tech that can run on EGX.

“The industry is ramping 5G and the ‘smart everything’ revolution is beginning,” said Huang. “Billions of sensors and devices will be sprinkled all over the world enabling new applications and services. We’re working with Red Hat to build a cloud-native, massively scalable, high-performance GPU computing infrastructure for this new 5G world. Powered by the Nvidia EGX Edge Supercomputing Platform, a new wave of applications will emerge, just as with the smartphone revolution.”

Things seemed to have gone a bit quiet on the virtualization front, with NFV, SDN, etc having apparently entered the trough of disillusionment. Nvidia is a substantial cloud player these days, however, and judging by the level of support this new initiative has, EGX could a key factor in moving the telecoms cloud onto the slope of enlightenment.