NTT demos low-latency transport and precision control on IOWN

NTT demonstrated  Sony's precision bilateral control technology running over low-latency transport through the IOWN All-Photonics Network.

The demo aimed at achieving precise remote manipulation with haptic feedback, unimpeded by the distance between separated locations. 

Some of the results of this research will be exhibited at this week’s NTT R & D Forum - IOWN ACCELERATION event.

Bilateral control technology, which allows for the synchronization of a robot arm with the operator's movements at a distant location.

NTT provided uncompressed video transmission with direct mapping of data directly from the SDI signal to SMPTE ST 2110 streams .  This minimizes delay from video input on the sending side to video output on the receiving side to less than 1 millisecond. The demo also leverages RDMA acceleration technology, facilitating direct memory-to-memory data transfer without the need for CPU involvement.

https://group.ntt/en/newsrelease/2023/11/10/pdf/231110ba.pdf

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Deutsche Telekom raises guidance on strong Q3

Deutsche Telekom posted third quarter revenue of 27.6 billion euros, up 0.7 percent in organic terms. High-margin service revenues up 4.1 percent in organic terms.

Net profit was up 21.9 percent to 1.9 billion euros.

“In these uncertain times, Deutsche Telekom continues to grow unabated on both sides of the Atlantic,” said Tim Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom. “We want our shareholders to participate in this positive development by way of a higher dividend.”

Deutsche Telekom raised its guidance for the third time this year. For the full year, the Group now expects adjusted EBITDA AL of around 41.1 billion euros and free cash flow AL of more than 16.1 billion euros, in each case 0.1 billion euros more than planned as of the midpoint of 2023. At the start of the year, expectations for adjusted EBITDA AL were still at around 40.8 billion euros, and for free cash flow AL, at more than 16 billion euros. Adjusted earnings per share are still expected to reach more than 1.60 euros.

Germany

In its home market, Deutsche Telekom recorded a very positive trend in its customer numbers and financial figures in the third quarter. The company once again led the market with 96,000 broadband net additions. 6.7 million or 45 percent of Telekom consumers have now subscribed to a line offering bandwidths of up to 100 Mbit/s or higher. The MagentaTV customer base increased by 51,000 in the quarter to 4.3 million.

The new mobile rate plan structure continues to draw in strong numbers. Telekom recorded 350,000 branded contract customer additions between July and September. Telekom remains market leader in mobile service revenues, which were up 2.9 percent.

Deutsche Telekom has managed to increase its earnings in Germany in every quarter for seven years now. In the third quarter of 2023, adjusted EBITDA AL recorded organic growth of 3.1 percent year-on-year, increasing to 2.6 billion euros. At the same time, revenue increased by 2.1 percent in organic terms to 6.3 billion euros. 

U.S.

Between June and September, T-Mobile US recorded postpaid net additions of 1.2 million. The year-on-year decline is attributable to the deactivation of SIM cards issued to students during the coronavirus pandemic, which are now no longer required. In the postpaid phone customer segment, which is particularly important for service revenues, net customer additions were on a par with the prior-year level at 850,000. Both figures represent the best in the U.S. mobile industry. Another 557,000 users opted for the fixed-network high-speed internet substitute product in the third quarter, bringing the customer base for this offering to 4.2 million.

The company recorded organic year-on-year growth in service revenues of 4.7 percent in the quarter to reach 15.9 billion U.S. dollars. The key earnings indicator, adjusted core EBITDA, which eliminates effects from the planned withdrawal from the terminal equipment lease business, grew by 12.7 percent in organic terms to 7.3 billion U.S. dollars.

Europe

The Europe operating segment once again delivered strong financials. In organic terms, adjusted EBITDA AL increased by 3.3 percent year-on-year in the third quarter to 1.1 billion euros. Revenue generated by the European national companies increased by 3.7 percent in organic terms to 3.0 billion euros. This growth was primarily driven by organic growth of 5.2 percent in mobile service revenues.

Customer numbers in Europe also saw good growth. Mobile contract net adds totaled 223,000, the number of broadband lines increased by 76,000, and the number of TV customers by 52,000.

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SpaceX launches SES’s Fifth and Sixth O3b mPOWER Satellites

SES confirmed the successful launch of its fifth and sixth O3b mPOWER satellites by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The duo completes the six #MEO satellites required for SES to offer high-performance network services delivering high throughput, predictable low latency, unique flexibility and service availability.

The first four O3b mPOWER satellites launched in the last year have arrived at their target orbital position and are undergoing in-orbit checks, including a series of system validation tests encompassing both space and ground components. 

O3b mPOWER commercial service is expected to begin during the second quarter of 2024.

https://www.ses.com/press-release/sess-fifth-and-sixth-o3b-mpower-satellites-successfully-launched

• Last month, SES announced it will add to the constellation two more satellites built by Boeing, bringing the total number of O3b mPOWER satellites to 13.

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Softbank deploys new optical network in Japan with Fujitsu

 SoftBank completed the nationwide deployment of an all optical network in Japan using Fujitsu’s next-generation optical transmission platform “1 FINITY Ultra Optical System T900”.

Fujitsu says the new network realizes a reduction of power consumption of up to 90% compared to previous networks by connecting to equipment compatible with all optical technology and applying liquid cooling technology. 

The network has a maximum capacity of 48.8 Tbps over an optical pair.

SoftBank's IP routers are now equipped with coherent optical transceivers connected via the Fujitsu 1FINITY platforms.

https://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/news/press/sbkk/2023/20231110_01/

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Groq scales AI inference processing

Groq, an AI start-up based in Mountain View, California offering a  Tensor Streaming Processor (TSP), announced a new performance bar of more than 300 tokens per second per user on Meta AI's Llama-2 70B LMM.

The benchmark was set using Groq’s  Language Processing Unit system. 

Jonathan Ross, CEO and founder of Groq commented, "When running LLMs, you can't accurately generate the 100th token until you've generated the 99th. An LPU™ system is built for the sequential and compute-intensive nature of GenAI language processing. Simply throwing more GPUs at LLMs doesn't solve for incumbent latency and scale-related issues. Groq enables the next level of AI."

https://groq.com

• Prior to founding Groq, Jonathan began what became Google’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) as a 20% project where he designed and implemented the core elements of the first generation TPU chip.

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Softbank upgrades optical network in Japan with Fujitsu

SoftBank completed the nationwide deployment of an all optical network in Japan using Fujitsu’s next-generation optical transmission platform “1 FINITY Ultra Optical System T900”.

Fujitsu says the new network realizes a reduction of power consumption of up to 90% compared to previous networks by connecting to equipment compatible with all optical technology and applying liquid cooling technology. 

The network has a maximum capacity of 48.8 Tbps over an optical pair.

SoftBank's IP routers are now equipped with coherent optical transceivers connected via the Fujitsu 1FINITY platforms.

https://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/news/press/sbkk/2023/20231110_01/

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Trillion Parameter Consortium targets AI systems

A new Trillion Parameter Consortium (TPC) has been formed by federal laboratories, research institutes, academia, and industry to address the challenges of building large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) systems and advancing trustworthy and reliable AI for scientific discovery.

Training LLMs (large language models) with this many parameters requires exascale class computing resources, such as those being deployed at several U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories and multiple TPC founding partners in Japan, Europe, and elsewhere. 

TPC will:

TPC will:

• Build an open community of researchers interested in creating state-of-the-art large-scale generative AI models aimed broadly at advancing progress on scientific and engineering problems by sharing methods, approaches, tools, insights, and workflows.
• Incubate, launch, and coordinate projects voluntarily to avoid duplication of effort and to maximize the impact of the projects in the broader AI and scientific community.
• Create a global network of resources and expertise to facilitate the next generation of AI and bring together researchers interested in developing and using large-scale AI for science and engineering.

Founding partners of TPC:

* AI Singapore

* Allen Institute For AI

* AMD

* Argonne National Laboratory

* Barcelona Supercomputing Center

* Brookhaven National Laboratory

* CalTech

* CEA

* Cerebras Systems

* CINECA

* CSC - IT Center for Science

* CSIRO

* ETH Zürich

* Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory

* Flinders University

* Fujitsu Limited

* HPE

* Intel

* Juelich Supercomputing Center

* Kotoba Technologies, Inc.

* LAION

* Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

* Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

* Leibniz Supercomputing Centre

* Los Alamos National Laboratory

* Microsoft

* National Center for Supercomputing Applications

* National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)

* National Renewable Energy Laboratory

* National Supercomputing Centre, Singapore

* NCI Australia

* New Zealand eScience Infrastructure

* Northwestern University

* NVIDIA

* Oak Ridge National Laboratory

* Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

* Pawsey Institute

* Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

* RIKEN

* Rutgers University

* SambaNova

* Sandia National Laboratories

* Seoul National University

* SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

* Stanford University

* STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UKRI

* Texas Advanced Computing Center

* Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

* Together AI

* Tokyo Institute of Technology

* Université de Montréal

* University of Chicago

* University of Delaware

* University of Illinois Chicago

* University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

* University of New South Wales

* University of Tokyo

* University of Utah

* University of Virginia

https://www.anl.gov/article/new-international-consortium-formed-to-create-trustworthy-and-reliable-generative-ai-models-for

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