- Companies including Microsoft, Google, Intel and Sony are backing a little-known initiative called the IOWN Global Forum, a worldwide association of cloud hyperscalers, telecommunications groups and chipmakers.
- The forum is working to develop technology standards for all-photonic networks, which use light rather than electrical signals to deliver data, with the goal of deployment by 2030.
- These networks are expected to offer significant savings in power consumption, increased transmission capacity and reduced latency, benefiting data-intensive applications such as AI.
- It is also expected to contribute to the transition to 6G, the next generation mobile network beyond 5G.
Some of the world's largest technology companies are backing a new type of communications network that is said to help reduce the overall power consumption of data-hungry artificial intelligence applications and speed up the transition to the next generation, 6G mobile internet.
Companies including Microsoft, Google, Intel and Sony are backing a little-known initiative called the IOWN Global Forum, a worldwide association of cloud hyperscalers, telecommunications groups and chipmakers.
The companies aim to fully deploy “all-photonic” networks (APNs) by 2030.
What is a photonic network?
The IOWN Global Forum is a global group that aims to develop technical standards for all-photonics networks.
Dozens of major technology companies have signed up as backers, including Microsoft and Google, the companies behind two of the largest public cloud platforms.
Telecommunications companies such as NTT, Ericsson and Nokia are also core members of the group. Chipmakers, including Intel and SK Hynix, also play an important role.
Simply put, a photonic network is one that uses light instead of electrical signals to deliver data. This approach promises to drastically reduce the energy consumption of transmitting data around the world.
Power usage is a major issue in the technology industry right now, and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, the rapid adoption of e-commerce, online streaming media, and workplace productivity tools has forced businesses to reevaluate their network infrastructure and seek new ways to deliver data.
What is your goal?
The goal is to ease the strain on current communication networks, which is expected to worsen in the coming years as the adoption of digital technologies and the demand for AI, especially generative AI, continues to grow.
“Mobile traffic is increasing every day,” Katsuhiko Kawazoe, chairman of the IOWN Global Forum, told CNBC in an email. “We need to use radio frequencies and power efficiently.”
Kawazoe added that IOWN technology will enable operators to optimize spectrum and power usage in mobile networks in real time, depending on the situation.
For example, a large city may require more wireless units during office opening hours than at night, while residential areas will require more units to serve the city in the evenings when workers return home.
IOWN technology “makes it possible to power down in certain situations within the network,” explained Gonzalo Camarillo, head of implementation components at Ericsson and chair of the IOWN Global Forum's marketing steering committee.
Mitigating the climate impact of AI
Large-scale language models like OpenAI's ChatGPT require huge amounts of training data and powerful graphics chips called GPUs, which put a huge strain on the climate.
Masahisa Kawashima, NTT's director of IOWN technology and chair of the IOWN Global Forum's technical working group, said photonic networks have the potential to significantly improve the capabilities of small data centers.
“Data centers are becoming larger and larger, and hyperscale data centers are becoming a battleground for reducing carbon in society,” Kawashima said.
“Many data centers are too concentrated in a small area, which increases the energy demand in that area. But with the IOWN APN, users can deploy data centers over a larger area.”
Each data center on this network, even if it is mid-sized, will be similar to a “hyperscale” data center, Kawashima said, allowing AI model developers to develop their AI models using shared GPU infrastructure in a small area.
“AI has become the center of competition in many industries, including automotive and pharmaceuticals. Many companies are interested in running their own GPU infrastructure,” Kawashima said.
What will IOWN's technology be used for?
The IOWN Global Forum is exploring several use cases for photonic networks with partners, one of which is for banks to use IOWN technology in their back-end infrastructure.
Kawashima said banks can set up two data centers in different locations and replicate data at both locations, which he added would allow the bank to “achieve resiliency” in its infrastructure.
Banks and other financial services companies need to send and receive data quickly to ensure consistency in their services and that transactions such as deposits, withdrawals, and wire transfers are processed smoothly.
Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, a Japanese bank, is one of the major financial institutions using IOWN technology in its financial infrastructure.
Another use case is broadcast and media streaming: today's modern streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime use large amounts of data to facilitate cloud-enabled delivery of movies and TV shows.
The aim of IOWN is to increase the amount of data that can be sent over the network and reduce latency, all while consuming less power in the process.
Sony is working with NTT to develop a wide-area remote production platform for broadcast stations, newsrooms and event halls.
“Distributed computing is indeed possible and will be greener and more energy efficient in the near future,” Katsutoshi Ito, head of connectivity technology at Sony's research and development center, told CNBC.
It could also help with the transition to 6G.
IOWN technology is expected to facilitate the transition beyond 5G to 6G, the next generation of mobile networks.
NTT's Kawashima said optical network technology could potentially reduce the cost for carriers to deploy 6G antennas, and it could also enable them to share radio towers for more efficient network optimization.
“Deploying antennas requires optical fiber to connect the antennas to wireless data centers,” Kawashima explains. “So if we use the IOWN APN to connect antennas to base stations, we could potentially reduce the cost of deploying antennas.”
“APNs will enable mobile network operators to share radio towers,” Kawashima added, because with 5G and 6G, “many operators are concerned about the large investments required to install antennas.”
IOWN technology is still in the early stages of development, and it will be several years before photonic networks have a real impact on the industry.
Now, the IOWN Global Forum is aiming to achieve its main goal by 2030. The forum aims to put the technology into practical commercial applications by the end of this year.
