Softbank to Build Japan's Most Powerful AI Supercompuer with Nvidia Blackwel...

TMTPOST -- Japanese tech behemoth SoftBank Group Corp. Became the first to adopt Nvidia Corporation’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips to build supercomputer, highlighting Japan’s efforts to catch up with AI trends.

Credit：Nvidia

Nvidia announced Wednesday a series of partnerships with SoftBank designed to accelerate Japan’s sovereign AI initiatives and further its global technology leadership while also unlocking billions of dollars in AI revenue opportunities for telecommunications providers worldwide.

In his keynote at Nvidia AI Summit Japan, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said that SoftBank is building Japan’s most powerful AI supercomputer using the Nvidia Blackwell platform and has plans to use the Nvidia Grace Blackwell platform for its next supercomputer.

Nvidia said Softbank is poised to be the first client to receive Nivida DGX B200 systems, which will serve as the building blocks for its new Nvidia DGX SuperPOD supercomputer. Featuring Nvidia AI Enterprise software and NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking, SoftBank’s DGX SuperPOD is ideal for the development of large language models.

SoftBank plans to build another Nvidia-accelerated supercomputer to run extremely compute-intensive workloads. Initial plans for the supercomputer are based on an Nvidia Grace Blackwell platform design featuring Nvidia GB200 NVL72 multi-node, liquid-cooled, rack-scale systems that combine Nvidia Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs) with power-efficient Arm-based Nvidia Grace central processing units (CPUs).

Softbank said it developed 5G L1 software based on the Nvidia AI Aerial acclerated computing platform,delivering the high stability and high performance essential for a carrier-grade RAN through parallel signal processing and the optimization of task initiation timing. The company has successfully piloted the world's first combined AI and 5G telecom network, known as AI-RAN (radio access network) that enables AI and 5G workloads to run simultaneously, opening new revenue possibilities for telecom providers. The test is a breakthrough in computing that opens AI revenue streams potentially worth billions of dollars to telecom operators. It built the world's first outdoor testing environment that enables the baseband processing of 20 5G cells with a bandwidth of 100 MHz on a single server featuring the Nvidia GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip in Fujisawa City, Kanagawa Prefecture.

In addition, with Nvidia AI Enterprise software, SoftBank is aiming to create an AI marketplace that can meet the demand for local, secure AI computing. This new service, which supports AI training and edge AI inference, positions SoftBank to become the AI grid for Japan, facilitating new business opportunities for the creation, distribution and use of AI services across the country’s industries, consumers and enterprises.

“Japan has a long history of pioneering technological innovations with global impact,” said Huang. “With SoftBank’s significant investment in Nvidia’s full-stack AI, Omniverse and 5G AI-RAN platforms, Japan is leaping into the AI industrial revolution to become a global leader, driving a new era of growth across the telecommunications, transportation, robotics and healthcare industries in ways that will greatly benefit humankind in the age of AI.”

Nvidia also announced a group of Japan cloud leaders including Softbank, GMO Internet Group, Highreso, KDDI, Rutilea and SAKURA internet are building AI infrastructure with Nvidia accelerated computing, networking and software to accelerate transformation across the nation’s robotics, automotive, healthcare and telecom industries. Nvidia aims to develop a national AI infrastructure network through partnerships with these cloud leaders.

At Nvidia AI Summit Japan, Huang and Softbank Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son discuss Japan’s emerging role in AI. Huang underscored that AI infrastructure is essential to drive global transformation. He said Japan is poised to create both types of AI--digital and physical, leveraging its unique language, culture and data.

“Every industry, every company, every country must produce a new industrial revolution,” Huang said, pointing to AI as the catalyst for this shift.He underscored Japan’s unique position to lead in this AI-driven economy, praising the country’s history of innovation and engineering excellence as well as its technological and cultural panache.

Huang emphasized the profound synergy between AI and robotics, highlighting how advancements in artificial intelligence have created new possibilities for robotics across industries. He said it is hopeful that Japan will take advantage of the latest breakthroughs in AI and combine that with the country's world-class expertise in mechatronics.

Son said Japan cannot miss this round of AI development as “We need infrastructure.” Commenting on Softbank’s supercomputer DGX SuperPOD, Son said Softbank is creating the largest AI data center in Japan with Nvidia support. As to the test of AI-RAN, Son said the intelligence network will become one big neural brain for the infrastructure intelligence to Japan.