5G meets AI: "Intelligent Revolution of Everything", EGX edge AI, and many leading companies

At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Los Angeles, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told hundreds of attendees from telecom companies, equipment manufacturers, developers and media reporters in his keynote speech that the smartphone revolution that has swept the world over the past decade is just the beginning. Next up will be the arrival of the era of the "Intelligent Everything Revolution."

“Someday in the future, people will realize that the smartphone revolution is just the first step in the IoT revolution, where everything is smart,” Huang said, making clear that NVIDIA will power AI at the edge of enterprise networks and in virtualized radio access networks (vRANs) to enable the next generation of 5G wireless services.

During Huang’s 90-minute speech, he named more than a dozen of the world’s leading companies that are now working with NVIDIA as customers and partners, including Walmart, which has incorporated NVIDIA’s latest technology into its Smart Retail Lab; BMW, Ericsson, Microsoft, NTT, Procter & Gamble, Red Hat and Samsung Electronics.

NVIDIA EGX edge supercomputing platform is a high-performance cloud-native edge computing platform that is optimized to take full advantage of the three key revolutions of AI, IoT and 5G, providing the world's leading companies with the ability to build next-generation services.

“The smartphone era of edge computing has arrived, and we have to create a new type of computer to deliver these applications,” Huang said at the Los Angeles Convention Center, noting that if the global economy could become even slightly more efficient with the help of such ubiquitous technology, the opportunity could be measured in “trillions of dollars per year.”

NVIDIA announces partnership with Ericsson

Fredrik Jejdling, Ericsson executive vice president and head of commercial networks, took the stage with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to announce a collaboration between Ericsson and NVIDIA on 5G wireless.

Key Highlights: NVIDIA and Ericsson collaborate on 5G to build high-performance software-defined radio access networks.

Joining Huang on stage was Fredrik Jejdling, executive vice president and head of commercial networks at Ericsson, a leader in radio access networks, one of the key components of high-speed wireless networks.

“As an industry, we’ve been trying to find better, higher-performance alternatives to the custom environments we currently have,” Jejdling said. “We are working with NVIDIA to find an effective way to combine GPUs with our heritage.”

The collaboration combines Ericsson’s expertise in radio access network technology with NVIDIA’s strength in high-performance computing to enable full virtualization of 5G radio, providing telecom companies with unprecedented flexibility.

NVIDIA and Ericsson are working together to innovate and bring together 5G, supercomputing and AI to create a revolutionary communications platform that will one day power trillions of always-on devices.

Red Hat and NVIDIA Collaborate to Build Carrier-Grade Telecom Infrastructure

Red Hat and NVIDIA Collaborate to Build Carrier-Grade Telecom Infrastructure

Huang also announced a new collaboration with Red Hat to build carrier-grade cloud-native telecom infrastructure for AI, 5G RAN and other workloads based on EGX. Red Hat, an enterprise software provider, already serves 120 telecom companies around the world and supports every Fortune 500 company.

NVIDIA and Red Hat’s collaboration will bring carrier-grade Kubernetes that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of applications to telecom companies so they can orchestrate and manage 5G RANs at a truly software-defined mobile edge.

“Red Hat is working with us to integrate the things we’re working on into a carrier-grade stack,” Huang said. “We’re now joined by the rest of the industry, including every data center computer manufacturer, and the world’s leading enterprise software makers, to bring this platform to market.”

Jensen Huang is introducing the NVIDIA EGX edge supercomputing platform, a high-performance, cloud-native edge computing platform optimized to take advantage of three critical technology revolutions: AI, IoT, and 5G.

NVIDIA Aerial Accelerates 5G

For operators, Huang also announced NVIDIA Aerial, a CUDA-X software development kit that runs on EGX.

Aerial enables telecom companies to build fully virtualized 5G radio access networks that are highly programmable, scalable, and energy-efficient, enabling telecom companies to offer new AI services such as smart factories, AR/VR, and cloud gaming.

Technology Built for the Enterprise Edge

In addition to telecom companies, enterprises will also have an increasing demand for high-performance edge servers. With high-performance edge servers, enterprises can use AI to make decisions based on large amounts of data in real time.

NVIDIA CUDA-X is a collection of NVIDIA libraries that provides developers with a flexible and high-performance programming language. EGX combines NVIDIA CUDA-X software with NVIDIA-certified GPU servers and devices.

This combination will enable companies to leverage the high-speed data streams coming from factories, production lines, and even city streets to deliver AI and other next-generation services.

Microsoft and NVIDIA Launch Technology Collaboration

To provide customers with end-to-end solutions from edge to cloud, Microsoft and NVIDIA are collaborating to more tightly integrate Microsoft Azure and EGX. In addition, NVIDIA T4 GPUs are being used in a new Microsoft Azure Data Box edge device.

Other top technology companies working with NVIDIA on the EGX platform include Cisco, Dell Technologies, HPE, Mellanox and VMware.

Walmart uses EGX to create the store of the future

Huang Renxun also used Walmart as an example to illustrate the capabilities of EGX.

The retail giant is deploying EGX at its Smart Retail Lab in Levittown, New York, a unique, fully operational grocery store where Walmart is exploring how AI can further improve the in-store shopping experience.

Walmart deploys EGX in its Smart Retail Lab in Levittown, New York

With EGX’s powerful AI and edge capabilities, Walmart can process more than 1.6 TB of data generated per second in real time, automatically reminding employees to restock, open new checkout lanes, recycle shopping carts, and ensure the freshness of products in meat and produce departments.

Huang noted that in the $30 trillion retail industry, even a half-percentage-point improvement in efficiency could mean huge gains. “The gains that can be made by using automation to improve efficiency in retail are extraordinary,” Huang said.

BMW, P&G, Samsung, and other industry leaders are using EGX

EGX is now used in a variety of real-world applications around the world:

Samsung Electronics of South Korea has deployed EGX early and is using AI technology for highly complex semiconductor design and manufacturing processes.
BMW of Germany is using intelligent video analysis and EGX edge servers to automate inspections at its manufacturing plant in South Carolina.
NTT East of Japan uses EGX in its data centers to develop new AI services in remote areas through its broadband access network.
Procter & Gamble, the world's largest consumer goods company, is working with NVIDIA to develop AI applications on the EGX platform for inspecting products and packaging.
 

Cities are also seizing the opportunity. Las Vegas uses EGX to capture vehicle and pedestrian data to make streets safer and expand the city’s economic benefits. San Francisco’s Union Square Business Improvement District uses EGX to collect real-time pedestrian counts for local retailers.

Amazing new possibilities.

To showcase the possibilities, Huang also included a demo during his keynote that showed what AI could do for the world around us.

At the conference, Huang Renxun demonstrated a million-dollar red McLaren Senna prototype on stage with the help of a smartphone and augmented reality technology, allowing users to view the car from any angle, including from the inside. In this demonstration, all the data of the car was transmitted to the phone from the Verizon data center in Los Angeles via Verizon's 5G network.

The technology behind the demo: Autodesk VRED running in a virtual machine on a Quadro RTX 8000 server. On the phone: A 5G phone and the NVIDIA CloudXR User App SDK for mobile and head-mounted display app development.

In addition, in a demonstration video, two people were driving on the road, discussing different topics, one was discussing the weather and the other was talking about restaurants. Huang Renxun showed how Jarvis multimodal artificial intelligence tracked the different questions from the two people and responded to what the computer saw and said.

In another video, Jarvis guides a shopper through a real-world store.

“In the future, this multimodal AI will make your conversations and engagements with AI much better,” Huang said.

Cloud gaming goes global

Huang also detailed how NVIDIA is expanding the cloud gaming ecosystem through collaboration with global telecommunications companies.

NVIDIA's cloud gaming service, GeForce NOW, can transform underpowered or incompatible devices into powerful GeForce gaming PCs with access to popular online game stores.

Taiwan Mobile and industry leaders such as South Korea's LG U+, Japan's SoftBank, and Russia's Rostelecom have partnered with GFN.RU to launch GeForce NOW, and Telefonica will launch a cloud gaming proof of concept in Spain.

At the scene, the photographer took a picture like this: With the help of 5G network, Huang Renxun demonstrated "Assetto Corsa Competizione" running on GeForce Now in real time on a smartphone. In addition, players can also drive the car smoothly in the racing game without any obvious delay.

Small screen, high quality: NVIDIA shows Assetto Corsa Competizione, an intense racing game, running over a 5G network without any noticeable lag.

GeForce NOW Mobile for Android devices is available now in South Korea and will be generally available later this year, with a preview also being shown at Mobile World Congress in Los Angeles.