The vast purview of artificial intelligence’s applications is nothing new. However, silicon and other hardware drivers are now reemerging as crucial cornerstones powering everything from intricate AI use cases to high-performance networking. How are AI networking and the silicon resurgence helping to shape the future of telecom?

And as the industry trudges into 2024, what signals are emerging on the role of custom silicon solutions in optimizing network performance and unlocking new, real-world value areas?

“We just had a great conversation with IBM talking about some real-world use cases, and that’s what I’m interested in,” said Shelly Kramer (pictured, right), theCUBE Research managing director and principal analyst. “We can pontificate all day long about how AI is going to change everything, but … I think where we are right now is the show-me-the-money stage.“

Kramer and her fellow analysts John Furrier (second from left), Savannah Peterson (second from right) and Dave Vellante (left) discussed revelations from day one of this week’s MWC 2024 event in Barcelona on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They highlighted the potential impact of AI and new networking chips for the telecom sector and beyond. (* Disclosure below.)

AI networking and developer empowerment

As new-age AI tools, such as OpenAI’s Sora AI, continue to reshape the computing landscape, hardware has resurfaced as integral to sustaining the networking backbone powering these applications. The first link in the value chain is telecom service providers. The industry has to preempt this new AI innovation wave and strike while the iron is hot, according to Furrier.

“The telco industry has to move now; AI is a forcing function for them to take advantage of … they have a lot of money to make,” he said. “Telco powers a lot of activities: our human lives, the lives we live, mobility devices. As data and AI come down for applications that are going to impact humans and the world, it’s got to run on something.”

The role of developers in driving enterprise tech innovation has evolved. The emergence of low-code platforms and collaborative tools promises to democratize development, empowering a broader community to create AI-driven solutions.

“I’ve always felt like developers are going to win the edge, because all these specialized use cases, you would think that developers are going to be the ones that drive that,” Vellante said. “But maybe that’s a real blind spot for this community in terms of being able to monetize and not get it over the top again.”

Despite the lack of explicit focus on developers on the show floor, the integration of telecom application programming interfaces with cloud platforms signals a shift toward developer-centric ecosystems, unlocking new avenues for innovation, according to theCUBE analysts.

“In every market that we’re covering right now, developers are leading the defacto trends,” Furrier said. “Whether it’s open-source AI or KubeCon at CNCF, developers are driving the change. The question is, if it’s not happening here, who’s driving the change, the cloud players? The infrastructure has to flip that bit first before it goes to the next level. Are the developers waiting in the wings? Is it not ready for prime time? These are open questions.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of MWC Barcelona: 

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the MWC Barcelona event. No sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE