Metaverses will require computational efficiency 1,000x greater than the current

While many companies are already working on metaverse projects, including Meta (formerly Facebook), Nike, and Adidas, these digital environments will require computing efficiency 1,000 times greater than today. That’s what Raja Koduri, a senior executive at Intel, said in a recent publication.

“Truly persistent and immersive computing, at scale and accessible by billions of humans in real time, will require even more: a 1,000-fold increase in computational efficiency from today’s state-of-the-art,” he said. “In addition to hardware improvements, we also need new algorithms and software architectures to achieve our goal.”

Metaverses is still unfeasible on a large scale

As highlighted by Koduri, in recent years, the metaverse has come to represent a utopian convergence of digital experiences. That is, an aspiration to enable rich, real-time and interconnected virtual and augmented reality environments.

These environments, he says, will allow billions of people to work, play, collaborate and socialize in entirely new ways.

“In fact, the metaverse could be the next big computing platform after the world wide web and mobile devices.”

According to the executive at Intel, the pandemic accelerated the process of using digital technology as a means of communication, collaboration and learning.

And the explosion of decentralized digital finance technologies inspires business models that encourage everyone to create innovations like metaverses.

Scaling problem

However, he pointed out that there is much to be considered for placing individuals in virtual environments.

These include believable and detailed avatars with realistic clothing, hair and skin tones; real-time sensor-based rendering that captures real-world objects, gestures, audio, etc; data transfer; and a model of the environment that can contain both real and simulated elements.

So, solving all this and, on a large scale, with the current computational infrastructure is unfeasible, according to him.

“To enable these features at scale, the entire Internet plumbing will need major upgrades,” he said.

Finally, the executive pointed out that the technology that allows immersive virtual worlds to augment the real world opens up many possibilities.