Intel announces new projects with AT&T, Google Cloud, FedEx

Intel announced a new pact with AT&T that will see the company provide silicon for the deployment of the telecom’s virtualized radio access network (vRAN).

The partnership was unveiled alongside a slate of other announcements at the Intel Innovation event. President of AT&T Labs and chief technology officer Andre Fuetsch said AT&T’s rollout strategy will leverage Intel’s product portfolio, noting that the two companies have been collaborating for years in transforming AT&T’s 5G core and RAN.

Dan Rodriguez, vice president of the Network Platforms Group at Intel, told ZDNet that the partnership will give AT&T “the flexibility to bring automation and cloud-like capabilities into its network, along with optimizations for performance, cost and operational efficiency.”

Google Cloud was involved in the announcement as well, with Intel debuting a “deep collaboration” on an ASIC-based IPU they codenamed “Mount Evans.” The two will work on the “design and development of this first-of-its-kind open solution supported by industry-standard programming language and open sourced Infrastructure Programmer Development kit to simplify developer access to the technology in Google Cloud data centers.”

“Innovation thrives in open environments where developers connect, communicate and collaborate freely. Technology is a human creation and builds what is possible,” said Greg Lavender, chief technology officer, senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Advanced Technology Group at Intel. 

“Technology is also inherently neutral. It is up to everyone to use it in a way that is more responsible, inclusive, sustainable and ethical. Intel has doubled down on its deep legacy in open platforms and massive inventory of foundational software technologies with the specific intention of enabling software innovation.”

Intel added that an autonomous delivery robot project from FedEx and DEKA Research & Development Corporation would be tested using 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processors, Intel RealSense depth cameras. The robot uses OpenVINO as the AI inferencing engine as well, according to Intel.

Intel also unveiled new 12th Gen Intel Core Processors and a deal with SiPearl to provide their Ponte Vecchio GPUs for use as a high performance computing accelerator within a microprocessor that will be incorporated in European exascale supercomputers. 

Intel announced a more comprehensive Developer Zone, oneAPI 2022 toolkits and new oneAPI Centers of Excellence. The new tools are designed to help developers, according to Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger.

The oneAPI 2022 toolkits are being shipped with 900 new features, and the company announced 11 new partners that they believe will help “enable further ecosystem adoption of oneAPI” including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of California Berkeley, University of Durham and University of Tennessee. 

“Developers are the true superheroes of the digitized world — a world which is underpinned by semiconductors. We will not rest until we’ve exhausted the periodic table, unlocking the magic of silicon and empowering developers so that, together, we can usher in a new era of innovation,” Gelsinger said.

Intel said the “Developer Zone” centered around offering developers access to a catalogue of software from Intel and its DevCloud development environment, which is built for testing and running workloads on hardware ranging from CPUs to GPUs, FPGAs and accelerators.