My recent experience at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit was engaging, especially regarding metaverse demonstrations. OCP was instantiated by Meta back in 2011, with the mission “to apply the benefits of open source and open collaboration to hardware and rapidly increase the pace of innovation in, near and around the data center’s networking equipment, general purpose GPU servers, storage devices and appliances, and scalable rack designs.” We’ve made great strides as an industry through open-source projects since the beginnings of OCP, and open compute and open edge are becoming increasingly synonymous. The metaverse is a true application of augmented reality where we are finally converging our digital and material worlds. But, for this technology to deliver on the hype, service providers will have to move computing power closer to the end user for optimal, zero to low-latency performance. There will also be a need for hardware acceleration to help edge infrastructure deliver these applications. Open-source projects and the acceleration of services from the edge will play a key role in fulfilling these requirements.
#1: We must address edge challenges to realize the metaverse
It’s exciting and certainly hyped; however, operators must address issues with packet processing to provide the best quality of services to the highest number of subscribers. The metaverse generates vast amounts of data, and the data centers that handle these workloads generate massive heat due to the power consumption required to enable AR/VR applications. These applications will require cloud-native edge infrastructure that can handle a tremendous amount of data processing to provide cost-effective, terabit-scale performance and reduced power consumption. At the edge of the network, this flood of data is compounded by the power, space and cooling constraints of legacy architecture. All of these challenges impact consumer-based metaverse applications, but the stakes are even higher for enterprise use cases.
If you only have room for a few servers and a limited power, space and cooling budget, how can you maximize your available assets while having enough room for applications, storage, compute, networking and everything else you need for the metaverse? These challenges will require an edge infrastructure transformation from virtual machine-based networking to a programmable, open-source edge capable of application monetization. Infrastructure processing units (IPUs) and Data Processing Units (DPUs) will play an integral role in helping service providers maximize their infrastructure and achieve hardware acceleration. Service providers can offload virtual switches, virtual firewalls, Kubernetes control plane, Cloud Service Provider Infrastructure software and more to IPUs/DPUs and intelligent network fabrics. This enables them to only run revenue-generating tenant applications, such as the metaverse, in the general purpose CPU.
#2: The need for speed in the metaverse
Ultra-reliable, low-latency performance is essential for real-time safety and user experience requirements in the metaverse. Unfortunately, the public cloud cannot provide an end-to-end latency lower than 10 milliseconds. While metaverse applications push high-speed data closer to the end user, operators will see the importance of laying the foundation for an open edge if they hope to satisfy metaverse performance requirements. This foundation will help them keep pace with the performance demands of emerging applications and achieve monetization. A key aspect of this foundation will be a cloud-native approach to network functions at the edge, such as the 5G user plane function, to ensure end-to-end, terabit-scale packet processing across millions of subscribers, with zero to low latency as they consume metaverse applications.
#3: Unlocking the metaverse with open ecosystems
Operators will move past closed networking models to meet the data processing requirements of the metaverse. Edge infrastructure transformation through open-source projects will become commonplace. With the advent of metaverse applications, there will be a heightened need for service function chaining to automate traffic flows across the networks. Service chaining based on virtual machines still suffers from duplication, latency, high cost and resource inefficiency. To remedy the shortcomings of virtual machines and achieve optimized service chaining, edge and data center operators must focus on open-source implementations that enhance flexibility, programmability and scalability.
Through open source technologies such as containers, companies can speed up the time-to-market of emerging applications to secure a positive ROI on their 5G infrastructure investments. And through network slicing, service providers can partition physical data centers into virtualized data centers, with each isolated slice optimized to the varying performance requirements of differentiated services and dynamic customer needs. Through these open-source capabilities, standards created by OCP and related projects will help operators “open” the whole rack to monetization while reducing the Total Cost of Ownership of edge infrastructure, finally realizing the next phase of the digital economy at the edge.
#4: Edge transformation will level the playing field
What is the point of all this innovation if we cannot enable metaverse applications in rural communities? To close the digital divide in rural communities at the edge of the network, rural providers will need to deliver end-to-end 5G. Optimizing the mobile core is not enough. Service providers will need to leverage the benefits of open ecosystems to enable end-to-end 5G and network slicing from the mobile core to the cloud, to the edge and the end user.
This collaborative industry model is disruptive, maybe even scary, to some rural service providers accustomed to traditional, closed models for their networking needs. But open ecosystems will prove essential for laying the foundation that enables the enhanced interoperability, scalability and programmability needed to satisfy the varying requirements of metaverse applications to the end of the network. One size does not fit all in meeting the performance requirements of these applications, so rural providers must leverage the benefits of multiple vendor technologies. This realization marks a make-or-break moment, but rural providers that understand the transformative role of open ecosystems and end-to-end 5G and network slicing in enabling the metaverse will flourish.
#5: Open ecosystems will not just be for your network stack
The metaverse itself is an opportunity for collaboration and the application of an open ecosystem approach. People likely think of the company Meta when they hear the term “metaverse.” This company is doing work to make virtual reality a veritable reality. Still, I’m hopeful for the metaverse to become an open community for developers and users through the creation and use of virtual work applications, VR chat rooms, virtual concerts, interactive gaming applications and more. It’s an exciting time for edge infrastructure amid the transformative forces of augmented reality applications. I'm on the “edge” of my seat to see what comes next.
