- Nvidia sees 6G as a way to get more GPUs into the telecom space
- There's still a lot of time before 6G actually becomes commercial
- The first 6G standard will be released in 2028
After its $1 billion investment in Nokia, Nvidia is wasting no time moving deeper into the telecom space.
Noticeably, the vendor had more presence at the Nokia and New York University (NYU) Brooklyn 6G summit last week. The annual summit covers academic work, early technical activity and more for the new cellular standard. The first 6G standard will be released in 2028, with commercial 6G networks expected to be launched in 2030.
"The 2026 Brooklyn 6G summit saw Nvidia there in force. Nvidia senior vice president Ronnie Vasishta gave an AI-focused keynote, pushing 6G as a distribution mechanism for AI. "6G really distributes AI to the entire population and enterprises. It's the connectivity fabric for AI, and it cannot be underestimated how important that is,” he said.
"I believe that Nvidia does see 6G as an entry point for them to capitalize on the telecom market," noted Mobile Experts lead analyst Joe Madden. "They will certainly be able to sell racks of GPUs to operators for national data centers and 'Sovereign AI' projects in various countries around the world." Madden, however, is still perturbed by the cost of GPUs for telecom.
"I have ongoing concerns with any plan to put expensive, power-hungry GPUs in every cell site," Madden said. "Ronnie Vasishta stated at the Brooklyn 6G Summit that the GPU solution would be the same cost as typical ASIC-based baseband units, but he didn’t specify whether he was counting development costs, BOM costs, or operating costs."
"Very few people with experience in the telecom market believe that GPUs are affordable in the RAN baseband processing itself," Madden stated.
GPU demos
There were also several Nvidia-backed demonstrations at the show. These include its Sionna research kit, a multimodal digital twins demo and a "real-time GPU-accelerated O-RAN dApp on NVIDIA ARC-OTA" display.
What we will actually see from Nvidia in terms of 6G as the standard becomes commercial remains to be seen. Clearly, however, its $1 billion investment means it is serious about being a 6G player.