AI Research

Ciena Powers SingAREN to Enhance AI-Driven Research with High-Speed Network

Published

5 hours ago

July 11, 2025

For over a decade, Singapore has consistently ranked highly on the Global Innovation Index, an annual ranking of 130 economies. In 2024 it achieved its highest position yet – 4th globally.

This strong performance is largely due to steady, long-term investment in research & development (R&D) as a key pillar of Singapore’s economic development strategy.

Supporting Singapore’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) ecosystem is the Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network (SingAREN), established in 1997. SingAREN is the sole provider of dedicated local and international network services for the local Research and Education community.

SingAREN’s network supports the SingAREN Open Exchange (SOE) for high-speed research and education connectivity, eduroam, an international Wi-Fi internet access roaming service for the international research and education community, and FileSender SG as a platform for large file transfers, among other services running on its network.

RIE is vital to Singapore’s progress, fostering economic growth and competitiveness. It also drives scientific advancements that can potentially address societal challenges and enhance our well-being.

SingAREN has supported robotic telesurgery trials across international boundaries, which require precise, instantaneous control, and a low-latency network for real-time collaboration.

SingAREN also enables high-speed, resilient connectivity to the National Supercomputing Center (NSCC), which manages Singapore’s national high-performance computing (HPC) resources, supporting research and innovation across various fields. In particular, the NSCC’s expertise and specialized infrastructure are often leveraged to manage and analyze genomic data. Transferring genomic data is typically difficult due to its massive data size.

SingAREN provided a high-speed link to the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore for a research project, transmitting more than 2 petabytes of cancer genomics data downloaded from repositories in the United States into NSCC. The research involved harmonizing petabytes of whole genome sequencing data, and downloads were expected to be extremely fast, stable, and efficient, after which, the downloaded data would be analyzed and reprocessed with high computing power.

This is but one of the examples of collaboration with NSCC to transfer, download, analyze and process genomic data.

Academic research is experiencing explosive growth and requires more data than ever before, fuelled by AI and Machine Learning (ML), and cloud computing. The increasing use of generative and agentic AI will also impact SingAREN and its research partners significantly, leading to increased data volume. This type of advanced research activity will not be possible without a robust, scalable, low-latency network.

In the coming months, SingAREN will enhance its network to further support its research institution partners. These plans include the SingAREN Lightwave Internet Exchange (SLIX) 2.5 project, to provide high-speed, secure connectivity by 2027, and the SLIX 3.0 vision to build a future-ready network that incorporates quantum-safe networking, AI research, and haptic surgery. SingAREN also aims to expand cybersecurity threat intelligence sharing and continue infrastructure upgrades, such as implementing 400G switches and enhancing Points of Presence (PoP) resilience.

SingAREN uses Ciena’s 6500 powered by Ciena’s WaveLogic programmable coherent optic technology. Deployed by Ciena partner, Terrabit Networks, Ciena’s 6500 supports SingAREN to respond to changing requirements on-demand, allowing the REN to continually maximize network efficiencies and offer customizable service delivery over any distance.

Associate Professor Francis Lee, Vice President of SingAREN

Our backbone network, powered by Ciena’s 6500 optical solution, is built to handle the growing demands of AI, genomics, and big data applications—transmitting petabytes of data. To support the advancement of Singapore’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise agenda, our flexible, low-latency network can now seamlessly deliver 10G to 100G connections to member institutions. We continue to push the boundaries of research and innovation, ensuring connectivity is never a limiting factor.

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AI Research

Indonesia on Track to Achieve Sovereign AI Goals With NVIDIA, Cisco and IOH

Published

2 hours ago

July 11, 2025

Soma Velayutham

As one of the world’s largest emerging markets, Indonesia is making strides toward its “Golden 2045 Vision” — an initiative tapping digital technologies and bringing together government, enterprises, startups and higher education to enhance productivity, efficiency and innovation across industries.

Building out the nation’s AI infrastructure is a crucial part of this plan.

That’s why Indonesian telecommunications leader Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, aka Indosat or IOH, has partnered with Cisco and NVIDIA to support the establishment of Indonesia’s AI Center of Excellence (CoE). Led by the Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs, called Komdigi, the CoE aims to advance secure technologies, cultivate local talent and foster innovation through collaboration with startups.

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison President Director and CEO Vikram Sinha, Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins and NVIDIA Senior Vice President of Telecom Ronnie Vasishta today detailed the purpose and potential of the CoE during a fireside chat at Indonesia AI Day, a conference focused on how artificial intelligence can fuel the nation’s digital independence and economic growth.

As part of the CoE, a new NVIDIA AI Technology Center will offer research support, NVIDIA Inception program benefits for eligible startups, and NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute training and certification to upskill local talent.

“With the support of global partners, we’re accelerating Indonesia’s path to economic growth by ensuring Indonesians are not just users of AI, but creators and innovators,” Sinha added.

“The AI era demands fundamental architectural shifts and a workforce with digital skills to thrive,” Robbins said. “Together with Indosat, NVIDIA and Komdigi, Cisco will securely power the AI Center of Excellence — enabling innovation and skills development, and accelerating Indonesia’s growth.”

“Democratizing AI is more important than ever,” Vasishta added. “Through the new NVIDIA AI Technology Center, we’re helping Indonesia build a sustainable AI ecosystem that can serve as a model for nations looking to harness AI for innovation and economic growth.”

Making AI More Accessible

The Indonesia AI CoE will comprise an AI factory that features full-stack NVIDIA AI infrastructure — including NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, NVIDIA Cloud Partner reference architectures and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software — as well as an intelligent security system powered by Cisco.

Called the Sovereign Security Operations Center Cloud Platform, the Cisco-powered system combines AI-based threat detection, localized data control and managed security services for the AI factory.

Building on the sovereign AI initiatives Indonesia’s technology leaders announced with NVIDIA last year, the CoE will bolster the nation’s AI strategy through four core pillars:

Some 28 independent software vendors and startups are already using IOH’s NVIDIA-powered AI infrastructure to develop cutting-edge technologies that can speed and ease workflows across higher education and research, food security, bureaucratic reform, smart cities and mobility, and healthcare.

With Indosat’s coverage across the archipelago, the company can reach hundreds of millions of Bahasa Indonesian speakers with its large language model (LLM)-powered applications.

For example, using Indosat’s Sahabat-AI collection of Bahasa Indonesian LLMs, the Indonesia government and Hippocratic AI are collaborating to develop an AI agent system that provides preventative outreach capabilities, such as helping women subscribers over the age of 50 schedule a mammogram. This can help prevent or combat breast cancer and other health complications across the population.

Separately, Sahabat-AI also enables Indosat’s AI chatbot to answer queries in the Indonesian language for various citizen and resident services. A person could ask about processes for updating their national identification card, as well as about tax rates, payment procedures, deductions and more.

In addition, a government-led forum is developing trustworthy AI frameworks tailored to Indonesian values for the safe, responsible development of artificial intelligence and related policies.

Looking forward, Indosat and NVIDIA plan to deploy AI-RAN technologies that can reach even broader audiences using AI over wireless networks.

Learn more about NVIDIA-powered AI infrastructure for telcos.

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