Nvidia enters 5G with Ericsson, Red Hat, and Microsoft partnerships

Nvidia has made a handful of announcements centred on its move into 5G, partnering with Ericsson, Red Hat, and Microsoft, with a spotlight on the telecommunications industry. On its partnership with Swedish equipment manufacturer Ericsson, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang announced during his keynote at Mobile World Congress Los Angeles that the pair of companies had been "secretly" working together on technologies to allow telco operators to build high-performing, efficient, and completely virtualised 5G radio access networks (RAN). According to Huang, it is the world's first software-defined 5G RAN. The companies said these virtualised networks could enable a faster and more flexible introduction of new artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) services. He said the ultimate goal of the pair of companies is to commercialise virtualised RAN technologies to deliver radio networks to market for new services, such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and gaming, with greater flexibility and in less time.