The Japanese conglomerate will also develop data centres in partnership with Nvidia to host generative AI and wireless applications on a multi-tenant common server platform that will cut down expenses and be more energy efficient
Nvidia to drive SoftBank’s data centres with the Grace Hopper superchip. (Credit: NVIDIA Corporation)
Nvidia has partnered with SoftBank to develop a platform for generative artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G/6G applications that will be based on the American technology company’s GH200 Grace Hopper superchip.
The Japanese conglomerate intends to roll out the platform at its new, distributed AI data centres across Japan.
SoftBank will develop data centres in partnership with Nvidia to host generative AI and wireless applications on a multi-tenant common server platform that will cut down expenses and be more energy efficient.
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said: “NVIDIA Grace Hopper is a revolutionary computing platform designed to process and scale-out generative AI services. Like with other visionary initiatives in their past, SoftBank is leading the world to create a telecom network built to host generative AI services.”
According to Nvidia, the platform will utilise the new NVIDIA MGX reference architecture with Arm Neoverse-based GH200 Superchips.
The platform is also anticipated to enhance performance, scalability, and resource utilisation of application workloads.
SoftBank president and CEO Junichi Miyakawa said: “Our collaboration with NVIDIA will help our infrastructure achieve a significantly higher performance with the utilization of AI, including optimisation of the RAN.
“We expect it can also help us reduce energy consumption and create a network of interconnected data centres that can be used to share resources and host a range of generative AI applications.”
The new data centres will be distributed evenly across SoftBank’s footprint and will be capable of handling both AI and 5G workloads. They are anticipated to perform better at peak capacity with minimal latency and at significantly reduced energy costs.
Separately, Nvidia has unveiled a new class of large-memory AI supercomputer called NVIDIA DGX.
The new AI supercomputer is powered by Nvidia GH200 Grace Hopper superchips and the NVIDIA NVLink Switch System.
According to Nvidia, NVIDIA DGX will facilitate the development of giant, next-generation models for workloads in generative AI language applications, recommender systems, and data analytics.