Korean electronics giant Samsung has announced a partnership with GPU and AI chipmaker NVIDIA, to advance AI-RAN technologies.
Samsung says it has made significant progress in technology and ecosystem development of AI-RAN, claiming to unlock the full potential of software-based networks with NVIDIA’s AI platform.
The newly announced collaboration, according to Samsung, aims to support a smooth and easy adoption of AI in mobile networks by expanding the ecosystem of CPUs and bolstering partnerships with GPU companies.
"To maximise and bring the power of AI into Radio Access Networks (RAN), Samsung has made significant technological progress leveraging its in-house AI and radio expertise since the beginning of 2024," Samsung says.
"One of the pivotal milestones achieved was the interoperability between Samsung’s O-RAN compliant virtualized RAN (vRAN) and NVIDIA’s accelerated computing, which took place in Samsung Research’s lab in late last year.
"Samsung has successfully demonstrated a proof-of-concept to verify how NVIDIA’s accelerated computing can be seamlessly integrated into software-based networks to help enhance AI capabilities.
"Samsung can seamlessly deliver AI-RAN by integrating its vRAN (virtualized Distributed Unit, vDU) with NVIDIA’s accelerated computing into a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) server where Samsung’s vRAN software is installed."
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The two companies say they will continue to explore the best-of-breed combinations of AI-RAN options leveraging Samsung vRAN with NVIDIA’s Grace CPU and/or GPU based AI platform using Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) technologies.
“While AI is reshaping the telecommunications landscape, Samsung is helping operators to build the right network architecture and environment where AI can thrive, all powered by our proven and AI-powered vRAN,” said June Moon, Executive Vice President, Head of R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics.
“This collaboration with NVIDIA signifies our continued efforts to expand GPU and CPU ecosystem, and we look forward to exploring more possibilities in the future.”
Ronnie Vasishta, Senior Vice President for Telecom at NVIDIA said Samsung's vRAN expertise and software integrated with the NVIDIA’s AI accelerated computing will accelerate the path to AI-native wireless networks.
“AI-RAN is a critical technology that delivers transformative gains in network utilisation, efficiency and performance, while enabling new AI services,” said Vasishta.
“Samsung is a frontrunner in AI-RAN development."