NVIDIA and Fujitsu Unveil New AI-on-5G Solution for Telcos

Telecom companies worldwide are seeking standard solutions that can support 5G, AI applications, and high-end graphic workloads such as those required by the metaverse. NVIDIA is meeting this demand with an all-in-one, hyperconverged, and GPU-accelerated AI-on-5G solution that includes 5G vRAN, edge AI, and digital twin workloads. By reducing ownership costs, this system will help telecom companies expand their revenue streams across various industries, such as retail, entertainment, and manufacturing, in addition to supporting the multitrillion-dollar, 5G-enabled ecosystem of smart cities.

The NVIDIA AI-on-5G solution system comprises the virtualized 5G Open RAN product suite from Fujitsu, which includes the virtualized central unit and distributed unit, as well as other virtualized software functions of vRAN from Fujitsu. It also includes the NVIDIA Aerial software development kit for 5G vRAN, NVIDIA Omniverse, NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation software, and NVIDIA CloudXR for streaming extended reality.

The NVIDIA A100X and L40 converged accelerators provide the necessary hardware, with performance verification and evaluation tests supported by the 5G Open RAN ecosystem experience project promoted by NTT DOCOMO.

Collaborating with Fujitsu, NVIDIA’s system can deliver ultra-low latency services, highly optimized total cost of ownership, and energy-efficient performance. This all-in-one system uses GPUs to accelerate software-defined 5G vRAN, edge AI, and graphics applications, without bespoke hardware accelerators or a specific telecom CPU.

This approach ensures that the GPUs can accelerate the vRAN based on NVIDIA Aerial, AI video analytics based on NVIDIA Metropolis, streaming immersive extended reality experiences based on NVIDIA CloudXR, and digital twins based on NVIDIA Omniverse.

The new AI-on-5G system is a step towards enabling software-defined, AI-driven, cloud-native, fully programmable, energy-efficient, and commercially ready 5G Open RAN solutions. NVIDIA’s portfolio of 5G solutions, anchored on the NVIDIA Aerial SDK and A100X converged accelerators, combined with BlueField DPUs and a suite of AI frameworks, is driving transformation in the telecommunications industry.

By collaborating with NVIDIA, telcos can access thousands of software vendors and applications in the ecosystem, which can help address enterprise needs in smart cities, retail, manufacturing, industrial and mining.

NVIDIA and Fujitsu will showcase the new AI-on-5G system at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, running from Feb. 27 to March 2, at hall 4, stand 4E20. This demonstration will provide an insight into how a single GPU-enabled server can support workloads such as NVIDIA Aerial for 5G, CloudXR for streaming virtual reality, and Omniverse for digital twins.

By creating an all-in-one, hyperconverged, and GPU-accelerated AI-on-5G system, NVIDIA and Fujitsu are enabling telcos to meet their clients’ demands for high-performance, energy-efficient, versatile, and scalable computing infrastructure, while driving revenue growth across various industries.