Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV (00:11):
Hello, you're watching TelecomTV. I'm Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, deputy editor, and as part of our DSP Leaders Council Industry Vision Report sponsored by Intel, I am here to discuss some of the key takeaways for the industry today, I'm delighted to be joined by Werner Schafer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing Group, and General Manager of Network Communications Sales group at Intel. Hi Werner, thanks for joining us. So let's start off with sustainability. This was key to respondents in the report with 98% ranking it as being of high or the utmost importance of the back of MWC. Can you tell us more about what you are hearing and the work that Intel is doing in this area?

Werner Schaefer, Intel Corporation (00:59):
Yeah, happy to, and thanks for having me. Definitely. Sustainability was a big topic in Barcelona and it has been before and it has ever since been a big topic in the conversations we have with the operators and we're responding to it. Like in Barcelona, we talk at length about our infrastructure power manager, our IPM, which provides tremendous power savings and not just in new generations, it's actually perfectly fine for Brownfield. So whatever is in existing infrastructure, we can save power of that. And beautifully, Nokia actually showcased IPM as part of their solution bringing up to 40% CPU power savings in the 5G core. So real world use case, real world application of this tremendous solution that we've already got into place. We know there's other ISVs that are planning to implement IPM and their offerings. And then on top of that, we also obviously talking about new generations of silicon coming from us that brings tuna half, 2.7 times the performance on a rec level. So a lot in Barcelona that we were able to discuss all the way to obviously savings, not just on CPU level, but then overall in the RAN and in the way that we architect together to bring lower pouch, better utilization, and also in the design of the networks, making sure that we really utilize the capabilities that we have today. We don't build anymore for peak performance. We build to manage networks dynamic dynamically and make sure that we power down what's not in use.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV (02:51):
And AI has been recognized as a pivotal technology with a significant impact on the telecom industry's future. What do you think are AI's biggest opportunities?

Werner Schaefer, Intel Corporation (03:03):
Clearly when you think about performance, when you talk about efficiency, when you talk about management, those will be great areas for AI to gain a deeper foothold into the operator's networks. To a degree, I mean, we've been doing this in the industry for many, many years, but with the new algorithms, with new solutions in ai, this will be even having a bigger impact there for the operators to really utilize AI as something that will help them drive down cost, bring better efficiencies and better services to their customers, and also obviously on the internal side, lower cost and help them just manage overall better. So very excited to see that this has been taken up in Nepal and that the leaders do think that it has that big of an impact to them in the next years.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV (03:59):
Yes, indeed. It appears that AI will transform many aspects within the telco industry and bring significant opportunities. On that note, what is your advice to DSPs and CSPs to streamline AI development and its integration into network operations?

Werner Schaefer, Intel Corporation (04:15):
Well, my advice is maybe to start to say, Hey, take a deep breath and look beyond the hype that we currently have maybe, and really think about what is there that you to, you want to get out of your AI deployments and shy away from the conversation about what GPU do I need in my infrastructure. And there's important other areas that we'll need to look at as well, data availability, security compliance, the skillset of the employees that are supposed to bring this all in, all the way to what is the ethics about that and the usage. And quite frankly, for some of the things that want to do, the infrastructure may already be there because quite frankly, it depends on the workloads. And if you, for instance, look at inference, 90% of that today runs on your trusted X 86 infrastructure on Xon, right? So we'll need to look at where the operators want to go, what the workloads are. And we're not standing still, obviously our next generation silicon coming out specifically for the industry. Granite Rapids D is going to have AI accelerators also already built in. So I would say my advice is let's look clearly where the implementation is supposed to take place, what the workloads are that the operators want to use AI for in, and then we should have a conversation and see what can be done best to design that.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV (05:52):
Aside from ai, the geographical imbalance in the supply chain is also a hot topic with hardware becoming increasingly regionalized. What is Intel doing to mitigate supply chain risks for DSPs and CSPs?

Werner Schaefer, Intel Corporation (06:07):
Well, I think it starts with our IDM 2.0 strategy, right? So we are actually investing heavily in more capacity, specifically more capacity outside of a PJ region. We have announced and we're building new factories in the United States. We are building new capacities overall in the European Union and Germany, France, Poland, and Ireland. So we definitely want to help just from a geographically diversity there. But it's more than that because supply chain stability and sustainability also depends who are your suppliers underneath. So really making sure, big learning obviously from the covid days that your supply chain is not dependent on just one region or that you're not depending on one supplier, then somewhere that may be based and you still have the challenge doesn't have the factory in the US if your supply chain underneath is affected by other regions that may not be able to deliver to you. So that's a big part of us. And it's also a big part that we discuss with our customers and saying, look, it's not enough to look where the box comes from that you may put into your network. You really have to go down into the supplier level and then component level to make sure that you have a secure supply chain.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV (07:36):
And you have mentioned the critical role of ecosystem collaboration in the success of 5G and beyond. At MWC, we saw the wide breadth of Intel's partnerships in the industry. Can you tell us how these collaborations will contribute to advancing network innovation and scalability in the year to come?

Werner Schaefer, Intel Corporation (07:53):
Yeah, I'm happy to. I mean, it was a quite impressive wall of ecosystem and all the partners, there's so many more. We literally have hundreds of partners in our network builders, as we used to call it. And the ecosystem is something I believe that we've done very well. And not just ecosystem per se, but industry changing ecosystem. When we think about the N of V days, we're replicating that now on the RAN side with virtual, ran, our contributions with our customers, with our partners, and really building stages and building areas where we can all come together, talk together and collaborate, and really help solving an industry problem. And if we look at all RAN v ran, the configurations that we have there, that's very much so in the tradition of driving the industries to better cost efficiencies, new technologies, new innovation that is only plausible with a broad ecosystem and eventually democratizing the technology that's being used and allowing new players also to come into the market and showcase what they can. That's true innovation that you only will see from a group of like-minded companies that are open for innovation and that really have a bigger and greater good in mind than just a single outcome of their own company.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV (09:25):
Yes, there is plenty of scope for innovation across the ecosystem. Well, we've covered many topics during this discussion, and unfortunately, Werner, we have run out of time, but I certainly look forward to seeing how Intel and its partners will continue to advance network innovation in the coming year. Werner, thanks so much for joining us.

Werner Schaefer, Intel Corporation (09:45):
Thank you for having me.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV (09:50):
And if you'd like to know more on the DSP Leaders Council and download the DSP leaders reports, please visit telecomtv.com and you can find them under our reports section. Thank you for watching.