SK Telecom is planning an ‘AI infrastructure superhighway’

To start with the operator plans to build ‘hyperscale AIDCs’ that require more than 100 megawatts in local regions, and later to expand this scale to gigawatts capacity or more. By doing so it hopes to ‘leap forward as the AIDC hub in the Asia Pacific region.’

These data centres will use renewable energy sources such as hydrogen, solar and wind power, and will expand to global markets through submarine cables, we’re told.

It plans to open a testbed for these in Pangyo, Korea, in December. This facility will be loaded with three types of liquid cooling solutions – direct liquid cooling, immersion cooling, and precision liquid cooling – as well as AI semiconductors like SK hynix’s HBM, GPU virtualisation solutions and AI energy optimisation tech.

It also plans to launch a cloud-based GPU-as-a-Service, by converting the Gasan data centre into an AIDC ‘to quickly resolve the domestic GPU shortage.’

It plans to launch the service in December with NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU through a partnership Lambda, and then in March next year it plans to introduce NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs.

Through this, the operators says it aims to ‘enable companies to develop AI services easily and at a lower cost, without needing to purchase their own GPUs, ultimately supporting the vitalization of Korea’s AI ecosystem.’

Finally, it plans to introduce ‘Edge AI,’ which it says can narrow the gap between AIDC and on-device AI using comms infrastructure. It is described as an infrastructure that combines mobile communication networks and AI computing, which is supposed to bring advantages in reduced latency, enhanced security, and improved privacy compared to large-scale AIDCs.

It is carrying out various proof of concept projects using this tech in fields such as healthcare, AI robots, and AI CCTV.

“So far, the competition in telecommunications infrastructure has been all about connectivity, namely speed and capacity, but now the paradigm of network evolution should be changed,” said Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SK Telecom. “The upcoming 6G will evolve into a next-generation AI infrastructure where communication and AI are integrated.”

SK Telecom has certainly nailed its colours to the AI mast. At MWC this year it (like most firms in attendance) was making a big splash about it, and the firm is clearly bullish about the prospect of telcos being a driving force in future development.

During the show, we spoke to Lee Jong-min, SKT’s VP and Head of Future R&D, who said: “In the future I believe that telco companies will move beyond the connectivity where intelligence will be embedded into devices. So we are going to provide AI based services and technologies in the future. In the in the past all the devices had connectivity… centred around IoT… but in the future there will be [a] transformation into the AI of Things where AI will be embedded into devices.”