Mobile World Congress Nvidia has decided to bet on both Arm and x86 platforms for the 5G edge, with a new data processing unit – aka SmartNIC – that packs 16 Arm cores.
The forthcoming BlueField-3 A100 will include 16 Arm Cortex A78 processors but will be happy working inside Intel-powered or Arm-flexing servers.
Wherever it runs, Nvidia feels it has sufficient compute power to serve in software-defined 5G base stations and handle their network function needs so that server CPUs can be left to do other work.
Nvidia’s vision is also for those base stations to include its small form factor EGX GPUs, and for those units to be pressed into service running AI applications.
To help things along, the company’s Aerial software platform has been imbued with a 5G RAN.
Just why the 5G edge needs AI wasn’t explained to The Register. Maybe that’s why Google Cloud and Nvidia have decided to create a joint AI-on-5G lab to explore the opportunities.
Nvidia has also advanced the BlueField-3 A100 as a fine choice for high-performance computing (HPC), for which the…
