NTT continues its R&D activities at various research laboratories to realize a smart world. The Tsukuba Forum is held every year in May at the NTT Tsukuba Research and Development Center in Ibaraki Prefecture, and the R&D Forum is held every year in November at the Musashino R&D Center in Tokyo. In these events, we introduce NTT Group's leading-edge R&D technologies.
　In July 2019, NTT Research, Inc. was established in Silicon Valley in Northern California as an R&D base in the U.S. The purpose is to promote basic research in optical and quantum technologies, cryptography, and healthcare fields together with global researchers, and to support the global expansion of the NTT Group. To disseminate the Group's R&D activities globally, NTT Research holds an annual "Upgrade" event, and Upgrade 2024 was held in San Francisco for two days from April 10 to 11.
　This is a report by Waichi Sekiguchi, President of MM Research Institute, Ltd., who covered the event on-site.

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NTT Research Inc., NTT's R&D base in the U.S., held a two-day event Upgrade 2024 in San Francisco from April 10 to 11 to present their research activities. This year was the fourth Upgrade event since the launch in 2020. About 700 people from Japan and around the world visited the event, and the event was a large turnout for an event held by a Japanese company in the U.S.

NTT Research, headquartered in Sunnyvale, Silicon Valley, is responsible for basic research to create businesses in 5 to 10 years. The three main research areas are optical technology and quantum physics—which will be the foundation of next-generation information and communications, cryptographic information theory and blockchain technology—which will support information security, and biological information processing technology—which will promote the digitization of medical care. NTT Research is also leading the operation of the Upgrade event.

NTT set up 26 exhibition booths at the NTT XC (Experience Center), which NTT had established in San Francisco to disseminate information globally. Exhibits included NTT Research's technological research in the U.S., the next-generation optical information and communications platform "IOWN" and generative AI "tsuzumi," developed by Japanese research institutes. NTT Communications and NTT DATA, Inc. subsidiary—NTT DATA Services also exhibited their sustainability and transportation mobility service technologies, attracting visitors' interest.

On the first day of the two-day session, NTT Research President and CEO Kazuhiro Gomi, and head of IOWN Promotion Office Yosuke Aragane, held a press conference and announced that they had succeeded in an experiment to connect data centers with ultra-low latency in both the U.S. and the U.K. using the high-speed communication network IOWN All-Photonics Network (APN). Recently, it has become difficult to establish data centers in urban areas due to environmental issues and lack of land, and "Connecting data centers in urban and suburban areas with APN will enable integrated operation," according to Aragne.

On the second day, an Upgrade keynote lecture session was held at a nearby conference hall. In the opening ceremony speech, President and CEO of NTT Research Kazuhiro Gomi said, "Inventions such as the airplane and the Internet have upgraded the real world, but there has always been significant basic research behind them. He added that NTT Research was established in Silicon Valley in July 2019 to conduct basic research in the U.S.

During Upgrade 2024, I spoke with NTT Research President and CEO Kazuhiro Gomi, NTT Senior Executive Vice President Katsuhiko Kawazoe, and NTT Senior Vice President Shingo Kinoshita, about NTT's R&D goals and strengths.

Gomi: NTT's research laboratories have a long history and have produced various results, but to further revitalize and accelerate our activities, we need to diversify our researchers and partners with a global perspective. As NTT's global business grew significantly, we needed a system to support this growth. America is the best place to do that efficiently. Five years have passed since NTT Research was established, but we have been able to attract excellent researchers and have produced solid results. In that sense, we can say that we have largely achieved our initial objectives.

Gomi: There are three focus areas which are all in the field of basic research. First is the Physics & Informatics Laboratories (PHI Lab). The main pillar is to create new computers using quantum physics. The new calculation mechanism uses optical technology that is compatible with IOWN. The second is the Cryptography & Information Security Laboratories (CIS Lab). They create new encryption methods and verify their security. The third is the Medical & Health Informatics Laboratories (MEI Lab). Through bio-digital twin research, we believe that the medical field will change if the digital twin concept used in the industrial field is applied to the human body simulation.

Gomi: I often say, 'This is NTT's DNA,' but the most valuable thing is that we can create and provide services with our technology. We have to be a company that develops technology and leads the field. If we let go of the labs, the balance sheet will look better for a moment, but I think that by holding on to the technology, we will be in a very different and strong position in the eyes of other global carriers.

Kawazoe: NTT is unique among the world's telecommunications companies because we maintain large research laboratories. I believe that IOWN and Tsuzumi are the product of the hard work we put into our research efforts, and we will continue to strengthen these efforts. Basic research and development is necessary to create a new business. Some of the research cannot be immediately fed back to society, but if we do not maintain our research, we will run out of ideas for the next project. It is important to manage the entire institute while keeping the balance.

Kawazoe: It's going very well. It can be demonstrated in Japan, but it won't be a global appeal if it is promoted in Japan. I hope that by conducting demonstrations in various places worldwide and having people see and understand the technology, we can attract more and more customers who want to use IOWN.

Kawazoe: We have been appealing for Japan's concerted efforts since we started IOWN. I think this is the result of our repeated efforts. I am very pleased that this allowed Japan to display its strength to keep pace with the U.S. If the U.S. becomes an important partner in the global expansion of IOWN, we can advance this technology together. It is a big challenge and a huge risk for Japan to expand IOWN to the world by itself, so I think it is significant that IOWN was included in the agreement document this time in making steady progress forward.

Kinoshita: In Japan, we hold an exhibition once a year at the Musashino R&D Center, but it is not easy to invite people from overseas, so we wanted to create an opportunity for people outside Japan to see the exhibition by holding the event in the U.S. where NTT Research is located.

Kinoshita: Our strength is our comprehensive ability to conduct a wide range of research. NTT ranks 11th in the world in terms of the number of papers published and is ranked first in the fields of optical communications, speech recognition, cryptography, and quantum computing.

Kinoshita: NTT's optical-related technology is by far the strongest field not only at the industrial level but also at the academic level. IOWN is a technology that extends optical technology to the field of computing. Since we've been conducting research on this for many years, there is a difference in the accumulated know-how compared to other fields.

Kinoshita: About 140 companies are participating in the IOWN Global Forum including many global companies. At the moment, APN—ultra high-speed network is leading the way, but as we move into the field of computing, I think IOWN will continue to expand exponentially.

Kinoshita: It makes collaboration easier with top universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University. NTT accepts interns and sends NTT researchers to universities for joint research. To build strong connections with top universities, I believe it makes the process easier if we have a research institute in the U.S.

On the evening of the first day of the event, a welcome reception was held on the roof of the event venue, and NTT President Akira Shimada, who arrived from Tokyo, welcomed the visitors. "Research and development are part of NTT's history and culture, and the development of our proprietary generative AI "tsuzumi" is the result of 40 years of NTT's language processing technology research," he said, drawing loud applause from many participants at the reception.