As you move toward network transformation, power management is key.
But so is sustainability. Scott Dai, Global Telco and Edge Business Development
at Intel is here to show us how Intel solution addresses both concerns.
Scott, thanks for being with us. - Thank you, Clarence.
Scott, everybody is talking about sustainability.
But here at HPE Discover, we're seeing lots of solutions that require a lot of power.
How do you reconcile the two?
That is a really good point, Clarence.
Data is exploding,
both inside of the data center and even more so at the edge.
The amount of data that we consume,
everyone consumes on a daily basis is tremendous.
And how do you really,
one of the things that a lot of folks don't think about
is that as we're consuming data, as this data explosion continues,
the amount of power required to fuel that data explosion, right?
Because it's not just creating the data, it's processing the data.
There are more demands on the data.
We're introducing new aspects such as AI and
other new technologies to manipulate the data,
to drive outcomes for humans and
to improve our daily lives.
But that all requires power.
And when you up the power,
you impact your carbon footprint, and ultimately, sustainability
becomes more and more of an issue.
So as human beings,
obviously everybody is well aware of the effects
of climate change that we're dealing with today.
And quite frankly, we've got to do something about it.
We've got to do good first and foremost.
And one of the technologies that Intel is trying to
demonstrate here today with our dynamic AI-based
5G Core Power Management demo is the art of the possible.
What can be done today to drive more sustainability into data
with already existing feature sets and technologies across the ecosystem?
So let's take a look at Intel's solution.
So let me just kind of jump into this dashboard right here.
Just like the makeup of the demo itself,
we don't like to use synthetic benchmarks.
So we're leveraging a traffic profile,
a real world traffic profile provided to Intel
by a tier one service provider in Europe.
And as you can imagine,
service provider traffic profiles on their network, obviously there are
peaks of throughput as well as troughs.
So in this instance, we're leveraging,
we're showcasing four instances of 5G UPF.
And we're following the throughput of these four 5G UPFs throughout the day.
Obviously, when everybody gets home from work,
you're on your computer, your PCs, you're on your phones,
you're putting more and more demand on the network.
And as folks go to bed,
not as much is happening on that side.
So this actually demonstrates the CPU frequency,
which actually follows along the traffic pattern.
As the peaks go up, the frequency goes up.
As we see the trough in the traffic pattern, the frequencies drop as well.
And it's really showcasing what we call P-states inside
of a processor as the frequencies go up and down.
So without any sort of AI agent or any leveraging,
any sort of the telemetry that fuels that AI agent
to modulate the frequency to support the traffic
that is required at that moment in the day,
this particular server would pull 610 watts out of the wall.
At this particular instant, this server is
drawing 445 watts leveraging the dynamic frequency ups and downs.
And over a 24 hour period,
what we're seeing is an average 427 watt power draw which equates to a 30%
power saving in the 5G core.
So one of the key features of this is not just saving power,
but it's how do you save the power beyond just
manipulating the frequencies with an AI agent and leveraging the telemetry that
the underlying hardware as well as the software components provide.
But it's also about meeting SLAs.
In a Telco network, you can't afford to drop packets because there are critical
services that are being delivered by that network. And what you can see here is again
each of the four instances of 5G UPF, we are not dropping any packets at all.
So we're actually demonstrating,
not only leveraging AI
to manage the network to deliver sustainable solutions,
but also delivering it in a way that we maintain SLA
for the end customer.
So I'll go back to the fact that this is a technology demonstration,
even though it uses off-the-shelf
commercially available and, in the case of Intel and HPE,
software and hardware feature sets that have been
iterated upon for the last several years and continuing to improve,
there's still a need in the broader industry for the ecosystem to come together,
take advantage of these hardware, software feature sets
and bring more sustainable solutions to the market.
So from an Intel perspective,
the ideal state that we ultimately want to drive to in partnership with
critical companies like Hewlett Packard Enterprise
is to bring more sustainability-centric solutions to the marketplace.