Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), Intel Corp. and Sony Corp. today announced that they will create a new industry forum, the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) Global Forum.

IOWN is a computing, communications and network infrastructure to realize a smarter world by using technologies like photonics, large-scale simulations technologies and next-generation ultra-realistic UI/UX technologies.

The global forum’s objective is to accelerate the adoption of a new communication infrastructure that will bring together an all photonics network infrastructure including silicon photonics, edge computing and connected computing to meet future data and computing requirements through the development of new technologies, frameworks, specifications and reference designs.

The companies will work together on photonics R&D, including photonic devices of the future, photonic network equipment and end-to-end architecture, powered by advances in photonics-electronics convergence technologies. The aim is to significantly reduce power consumption and enable instant access and response by shortening latency times and broadening transmission capacity.

All Photonics Network is a network based on photonic technology down to the level of information processing. From the network to the terminal, light is converted, and wavelength is assigned according to the function. Optical processors are used in terminals and servers, and networks assign wavelengths for each function.

IOWN also plans to accelerate the Connected compute, which is expected to be increasingly critical for computing across networks, leveraging both artificial intelligence (AI) and workloads that will be dynamic and distributed.

The forum will use cases and best practices for a smart world and enabling technologies, such as digital twin computing, R&D in human behavior and society modeling, large-scale simulations and next-generation “real” UI/UX device technologies.

Digital Twin Computing is a computing paradigm that enables things and humans in the real world to be recreated and interact without restrictions in cyberspace with "digital twin operations” – computations to exchange, converge, replicate and synthesize multiple digital twins.

NTT, Intel and Sony will act as founding members of the IOWN forum. In the coming months, NTT, Intel and Sony will select the initial board of the IOWN Global Forum to jointly kick off operations.

IOWN Global Forum will be based in the U.S., and membership opportunities are currently available to interested parties.

The detailed organizational structure is still being finalized and will be part of the bylaws of the IOWN Global Forum. The companies plan to have at least two different membership tiers. The forum also expects several different working groups.