Red Hat partners Nvidia to advance AI and 5G

Johannesburg, 22 Mar 2023

Open source solution provider Red Hat, Inc. will collaborate with Nvidia to deliver radio access network (RAN) deployments on industry-standard servers across hybrid and multicloud.

Benefits to Red Hat / Nvidia customers

Lower total cost of ownership (TCO), reducing costs associated with deploying and maintaining RAN and AI at scale.
Acceleration of network deployments across the hybrid and multicloud, setting the stage for multi-tenancy and RAN-as-a-service;
Composable infrastructure, which mitigates the need for specialised hardware and, when combined with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, provides low latency.
Connectivity for billions of devices, extending the reach of AI capabilities and applications to all devices at the edge.
Acceleration of additional use cases including multi-access edge computing (MEC), autonomous vehicles, industrial and agricultural, by enabling AI and machine learning (ML) at the edge.

According to a statement released by the companies, Red Hat's Kubernetes platform Red Hat OpenShift now supports Nvidia converged accelerators and the Nvidia Aerial SDK for software-defined 5G virtual radio access networks (vRAN) and enterprise AI applications.

This, the sattement says, delivers a composable infrastructure to customers, the companies assert, enabling them to better meet the data demands of compute-heavy applications for edge computing, private 5G, and AI, with greater flexibility and interoperability, risk mitigation and a faster ROI.

Red Hat and Nvidia explain that a c omposable infrastructure helps to streamline resources and optimise existing IT environments by removing the need for specialised, space-consuming hardware and specialised software. Nvidia GPUs, DPUs and converged accelerators, which combine a Nvidia Ampere GPU with a Nvidia BlueField-2 in a single package, can take the load off of traditional CPUs by disaggregating compute, storage and networking resources to process packets faster, and with greater security measures by isolating infrastructure-heavy tasks.

Nvidia Aerial is an application framework for building software-defined, cloud-native 5G RAN applications at scale. In addition to Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security help better manage and secure multicluster applications without inhibiting performance.

This will put service providers in a better position to meet the data demands of compute heavy applications without sacrificing security capabilities and management, the companies add.

Honoré LaBourdette, VP, telco, media, entertainment & edge ecosystem, Red Hat, said emerging technologies such as AI/ML, edge computing and advanced software-defined architecture, are fueling the continued evolution of 5G. "With support for Nvidia GPUs and the NVIDIA Aerial SDK on Red Hat OpenShift, organisations can unlock the full potential of 5G-driven use cases across hybrid and multicloud environments," he said.

Ronnie Vashita, senior VP, telecommunications, Nvidia, added: “It’s imperative that service providers adopt a cloud-native infrastructure to meet the growing computing demands of 5G and edge computing."