Ericsson and California-based Supermicro have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate on edge AI deployment.

The parties plan to explore the combination of Ericsson’s 5G connectivity technology with Supermicro’s edge AI platforms into commercial bundles that will simplify procurement and deployment with a unified product with pre-validated AI compute and 5G connectivity.

As AI becomes integrated into a wide range of business functions, many of those AI applications require low-latency response times. This development is leading to a demand for edge AI that deploys pre-trained AI models, generative AI and agentic AI to the network edge, outside the data centre, for local processing.

The combination of Supermicro and Ericsson technology is intended to enable businesses in retail, factories, healthcare and others to deploy edge AI infrastructure rapidly with wireless connectivity.

Supermicro continues to expand its portfolio of infrastructure products supporting edge AI applications with product choices ranging from small fanless devices to shoe-box sized systems to 1U rackmount systems. These stand-alone wireless systems can be deployed in diverse environments yet deliver standard data throughput comparable with wired systems.

Mory Lin, vice president of Supermicro, said: “Our compute platforms combined with Ericsson’s 5G technology will allow enterprises and public sector organisations to extend the reach of their AI applications where wired technologies are not a viable option, such as smart intersections, industrial manufacturing and remote infrastructure.”

Ericsson’s wireless WAN portfolio of indoor and outdoor low-and-mid band wireless adapters and its 5G, SD-WAN and security appliances can be critical components for an enterprise when traditional wired connectivity may be inconvenient or even unavailable for some of these edge deployments. In these situations, 5G can serve as the primary WAN connection or even as a backup WAN connection for business-critical deployments. With Ericsson’s technology, enterprises can take advantage of 5G functionality including network slicing, cellular intelligence and zero trust security.

“Ericsson has been transforming the WAN edge for almost a decade, allowing enterprises to connect anything, anywhere with speed and agility,” said Jonathan Fischer, vice president at Ericsson (www.ericsson.com). “We are excited to collaborate with Supermicro to extend this same speed and agility to the emerging edge AI space. Together, we have an opportunity to make it easier for enterprises to operate edge intelligence.”

Applications include:

• Retail: Accelerate checkout processing through real-time image recognition of items, enhance inventory tracking, and detect and alert against theft.
• Industrial: Monitor and control industrial machinery by locally processing sensor and camera data.
• Transportation: Enhance traffic safety by data analysis directly from camera and sensor sources for adaptive real-time traffic management.
• Healthcare: Support healthcare operations such as just-in-time inventory management to reduce waste and ensure critical medical supplies are available.

Enterprises and system integrators can learn more by visiting supermicro.com/en/solutions/ericsson.

Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro (supermicro.com) delivers innovations for enterprise, cloud, AI, and 5G telco and edge IT infrastructure.