Qualcomm to Collaborate with American Tower, Aims to Accelerate Next-Generation Edge Compute Using American Tower’s Distributed Real Estate

Original source: qualcomm.com.com

Highlights:

• Qualcomm Technologies to build and deploy a new class of scalable computing resources at the near edge.
• The agreement between Qualcomm Technologies and ATC Edge LLC (American Tower) aims to address evolving needs of edge use cases including Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud computing, 5G, Cellular Vehicle-To-Everything (CV2X) and autonomous system operations among others.
• The first use case aims to prove out an energy-efficient intelligent edge server based on Qualcomm Technologies’ premium Qualcomm® QCS8250 chipset and hosted at an American Tower Edge Data Center in Denver, CO. Leases are now available through American Tower for customers seeking to improve their performance, increase flexibility, and obtain reliable support for their IT infrastructure.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced a strategic collaboration with American Tower aiming to advance network architecture and accelerating near-edge applications. Powered by Qualcomm Technologies’ next-generation capabilities in the connected intelligent edge and American Tower’s leading tower portfolio and data center assets, the project is intended to help drive innovation to address evolving needs of edge data centers across areas of latency, reliability, power efficiency, and high bandwidth.

In today’s digital era, enterprises operate within a competitive environment and rely on technology for differentiation. This has created demand for near-premises data center technologies that can improve business outcomes. One way to build competitive differentiation is to provide technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence and 5G networks closer to the end device or “at the edge”. By taking advantage of Qualcomm® platforms’ high performance at low-power consumption, reliability, AI, and 5G connectivity capabilities in an American Tower Data Center, this project aims to meet the next generation of digital transformation.

Qualcomm Technologies aims to enhance the compute ecosystem by deploying a new class of infrastructure focused on optimizing network architecture and compute power closer to the edge, where data is generated. As the first initiative, system integrator Xingtera, Inc., will be installing a 2U ARM-based server XT-iES865-80 at an American Tower edge data center located in Denver, Colorado. The 2U server incorporates 80 Qualcomm® QCS8250 chipsets in one server—combining state-of-the-art, high-density, high computing performance and high graphics processing nodes into one intelligent edge server. This multi-access edge compute solution features a powerful heterogeneous computing architecture combined with Qualcomm® AI Engine and is designed to reliably run dynamic, process-intensive applications, such as mobile cloud gaming, video transcoding, machine learning and edge compute at incredibly high speed and low latency.

“Qualcomm Technologies is at the forefront of reorganizing the compute ecosystem, and we’re looking for ways to catalyze the transition by driving even greater reliability, security, connectivity, resilience and latency,” said Jeffery Torrance, senior vice president and general manager, Connected Smart Systems, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “We realize this undertaking takes an ecosystem of global technology leaders – all who want to reinvent how compute, storage, networking and lowest cost routing come together. This collaboration with American Tower further positions Qualcomm Technologies as the edge partner of choice for the cloud economy.”

The collaboration also capitalizes on American Tower’s leadership as a digital infrastructure provider. American Tower has a broad portfolio of data centers and tower assets that enable customers to improve their performance, increase flexibility and obtain reliable support for their IT infrastructure.

“American Tower offers distributed real estate to enable next generation applications regardless of the end user’s location. We are where you need the edge to be,” said Jake Rasweiler, senior vice president of US Tower Innovation at American Tower. “We are very excited about the opportunity to bring together our organizations with the goal of advancing edge technology.”

The Qualcomm QCS8250 SoC is equipped with native Android support, which is designed to support a wide range of mobile ecosystem partners and a vast developer community to build compatible mobile gaming and multimedia applications. “XT-iES865-80 servers located inside the Edge Data Center next to an American Tower 4G/5G cellular site provides best-in-class app experience for mobile users and helps drive excellent ROI for PaaS and SaaS businesses. We offer one of the lowest total costs of ownership while cutting operating energy usage by up to 70%, which in turn helps reduce carbon footprint and support sustainability benefits,” said Yuqing Niu, Chief Executive Officer of Xingtera, Inc.

Qualcomm Technologies and American Tower will continue to work together, combining industry-leading expertise in mobile technologies and wireless infrastructure, to evolve the role of data centers and reach new levels of compute power and performance. Future projects will aim to address and further advance areas of AI, Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X), 5G and fixed wireless access, autonomous systems, and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) use cases.

About Qualcomm
Qualcomm is enabling a world where everyone and everything can be intelligently connected. Our one technology roadmap allows us to efficiently scale the technologies that launched the mobile revolution – including advanced connectivity, high-performance, low-power compute, on-device intelligence and more – to the next generation of connected smart devices across industries. Innovations from Qualcomm and our family of Snapdragon platforms will help enable cloud-edge convergence, transform industries, accelerate the digital economy, and revolutionize how we experience the world, for the greater good.

Qualcomm Incorporated includes our licensing business, QTL, and the vast majority of our patent portfolio. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, operates, along with its subsidiaries, substantially all of our engineering, research and development functions, and substantially all of our products and services businesses, including our QCT semiconductor business. Snapdragon and Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Qualcomm patented technologies are licensed by Qualcomm Incorporated.

About American Tower
American Tower, one of the largest global REITs, is a leading independent owner, operator and developer of multitenant communications real estate with a portfolio of approximately 223,000 communications sites and a highly interconnected footprint of U.S. data center facilities. For more information about American Tower, please visit www.americantower.com.

About Xingtera
Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Xingtera started as a leading wired communication technology provider. Over the past five years, as a key partner of Qualcomm, we have dramatically expanded our solution offerings from a full scale of industry specific AIOT systems, end-to-end 4G/5G wireless networking solutions to green cloud/edge computing and networking platforms, all based on Qualcomm technologies. The XT-iES865-80 server platform that enables seamless mobile application experience for hundreds of concurrent users is the pinnacle of our mobile-first effort during the transition period. We are continuing to enhance the platform to make it easier for our PaaS and SaaS customers going to market in the mobile application space.