SK Telecom (SKT) and Rebellion have partnered with NVIDIA to establish a sovereign AI infrastructure in Korea. The initiative aims to develop an integrated computing system that links GPUs with neural processing units (NPUs) to enhance inference performance while significantly reducing power consumption.
The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on November 9 during the 'NVIDIA AI Day' event held at COEX in Seoul that the three companies signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) outlining this collaboration. This agreement is part of a project discussed between the Ministry and NVIDIA to connect domestic NPUs with NVLink Fusion technology.
The three companies plan to utilize NVIDIA's NVLink Fusion technology to build a heterogeneous AI computing system. Rebellion's next-generation NPU, the 'R200,' will be connected to NVIDIA's NVLink Fusion, and they will implement NVIDIA's MGX server rack standard to complete a GPU-NPU integrated system at the server rack level.
As the focus of the AI industry shifts from model development to inference, improving power efficiency and reducing costs in AI data centers (AIDCs) have become critical challenges. To address this, the three companies will adopt a 'separated inference' approach, dividing the inference process into pre-fill (question analysis) and decode (answer generation) stages, each handled by different semiconductors.
The high-performance NVIDIA GPUs will manage the computationally intensive pre-fill stage, while Rebellion's NPU will handle the sequential answer generation in the decode stage, maximizing processing speed and power efficiency.
Jung Seok-geun, SKT's Chief Technology Officer (CTO), stated, "It is significant to validate the potential of a Korean sovereign AI infrastructure that enhances inference performance and power efficiency by combining the strengths of GPUs and NPUs."
The Ministry of Science and ICT also plans to expand the infrastructure ecosystem across public and private sectors in line with its policies to foster sovereign AI and domestic AI semiconductors. Lee Do-kyu, Director of the Ministry's Information and Communication Policy Bureau, emphasized, "We will continue to support the creation of an ecosystem that enables domestic NPU companies to challenge and succeed in the global market."
* This article has been translated by AI.
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