If the Metaverse is the object of all desires, the current technological limits make that many of these expectations are only fantasies for the moment…
Metaverse’ concept is to offer, among other things, advertising spaces in a private virtual world. Microsoft offers workspaces, where avatars meet in virtual meeting places and other innovative solutions are emerging that will fit into this ecosystem. Yet the question remains: what infrastructure will be able to support this rush to the metaverse?
Tech giants such as Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, and Google, have decided to invest in a field where historical gaming companies such as Sandbox, Roblox or Epic Game, have been developing virtual environments with augmented reality and virtual reality technologies for more than twenty years. These technologies are also starting being used in the best online live casino. In addition, there are MicroLED screens, eye tracking (a set of techniques for recording eye movements) and hapting, for detecting body movements. In short, these technologies are essential for a totally immersive experience. Essential but also very consuming…
Technological constraints
Running a metaverse requires an infrastructure that offers very low latency (around 30 milliseconds, whereas 150 milliseconds is enough for video conferencing), a bandwidth of several tens of terabits per second, which is only achieved very exceptionally today, and a computing capacity that goes far beyond what current datacenters are capable of producing.
It is therefore becoming increasingly clear that the current infrastructure will not be sufficient. Meta has announced massive investments in hyperscale data centers with very high potential. But the number of hyperscale data centers, estimated at 600 today, may not be enough. Especially since all these infrastructures will have to be used in conjunction with other booming technologies such as artificial intelligence, Big Data and IoT.
Energetic issues
The technological constraint also intersects with climate and energy issues. Electricity consumption has already increased 25-fold, between 2010 and 2018. The arrival of the metaverse and other technologies mentioned above, such as artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain technologies, makes it obvious that energy consumption will increase even more, linked to datacenters. For bitcoin alone, electricity consumption was estimated at 0.5% of total consumption in 2021.
However, the metaverse will not be able to do without massive use of crypto-currencies. This makes it all the more necessary to use renewable energies or solutions that consume less energy.
Edge Computing, the solution?
The solution may lie in the use of Edge Computing, through local datacenters. Clearly, new digital uses (connected objects, robotics and metavers) require increasingly shorter latency to process time-sensitive data. And this latency will depend on the proximity of the data centers: let’s take the example of an autonomous car that needs a latency of a few milliseconds to make a driving decision. Here, data processing in global datacenters, hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, will be completely irrelevant. A similar challenge can be imagined with the metaverse, where the distance from the datacenter will be an obstacle to the fluidity of the metaverse.
Another challenge: data saturation
Currently, local datacenters are being deployed in urban areas to relieve the network and reduce bandwidth congestion. This solution is all the more interesting as they use renewable energy, pool resources and adapt to the context of cities and regions.
The future of the cloud may therefore lie in a hybrid system where even the major hosting players, such as AWS or Azure, will tomorrow offer hosting solutions that include Edge computing while offering the same quality in terms of scalability, elasticity in the event of load peaks, and data durability.
Metaverse coming soon, but not just yet!
But for the immersive experience to be complete for millions of users, the network infrastructure must be both sufficient and deployed at scale. The construction of a 5G or even 6G network or connected by “end-to-end” fiber (FTTH) is a necessary condition for this. Just as it is necessary to put in place machines with sufficient computing power. The new architectures developed by Intel or Nvidia, with the GPU, are answers to this paradigm shift that is the metaverse. But they are not yet ready and will only arrive in a few years…
Many questions therefore remain about the infrastructure model to be built, but the commercial prospects offered can serve as a spur to make choices in the direction of a solid, secure and climate-friendly infrastructure.
