To make the metaverse work, it will be necessary to change “the entire infrastructure of the Internet”

According to an Intel engineer, the advent of the metaverse will require a profound transformation of the Internet and the way we use it. To make the virtual world credible, we would need computing power 1000 times more powerful than that which we enjoy today.

The metaverse dreamed up by Mark Zuckerberg isn't coming anytime soon. This virtual world, where we can meet to chat, walk around, have meetings or play games, will require "computing power multiplied by 1,000 compared to today", said a senior executive. placed from Intel.

In a blog post, Raja Koduri, an innovation manager at Intel, took the liberty of expressing some reservations on December 16, 2021 about the virtual fantasies of Mark Zuckerberg and other metaverse advocates.

The internet is not ready for the metaverse

“Imagine what is required today to put two people in a social context within a virtual environment: compelling, detailed avatars with realistic clothing, hair and skin tones. All rendered in real time and based on data from sensors detecting 3D objects in the real world, gestures, sounds and much more, ”lists the manager, as if to show the difficulty of making people interact, if only only two people, in a compelling metaverse.

“Now imagine solving this problem at scale — for hundreds of millions of users simultaneously,” Raja Koduri says, “you'll quickly realize that our current compute, storage, and networking infrastructure just isn't not enough to allow this vision,” he concludes.

According to Raja Koduri, the metaverse will require "a much higher computing capacity" than that offered by current computers. Latency, these micro-delays between the execution of an action by an Internet user and its recognition by the server, will also have to be reduced significantly, quite simply so as not to lag in the metaverse. “The entire Internet infrastructure will need a major update,” the official explains.

A metaverse of privileged

Today, only the richest corners of the world have sufficient infrastructure and economic means to immerse themselves in a virtual world. And again, these worlds are closer to Second Life than the real metaverse promised by Mark Zuckerberg. It will indeed require much more advanced and much more accessible technologies to make this dream a reality. Replicating all our movements on a 3D avatar today requires expensive and complex performance capture tools. Doing it for millions, even billions of people simultaneously, is still a technophile's sweet fantasy.

We must not forget either that replacing infrastructures, producing new gadgets and continuing the race for power has a significant ecological cost. Remember that, according to the Senate, “70% of the total digital carbon footprint in France is due to the manufacture of terminals (40% worldwide). Producing more VR headsets, connected gadgets and chips, in the hope of one day diving into the metaverse, also means polluting more. The question here is not to stop innovation, but to ask whether the sacrifices required are worth it.

At Intel level, the production of processors “1000x more powerful” than those of today does not mean that the ecological footprint will be 1000x greater. Technological improvements often make it possible to have more powerful and less energy-consuming processors.

Intel remains optimistic

Moreover, such a leap in power will not be made only with semiconductors. Algorithms, neural networks, compression techniques… All these technologies will also improve our experience on the web. Combined, these innovations make the promise of a “1000x more powerful” future quite realistic. The head of Intel is also rather optimistic on this subject, swearing that "this technology, which allows immersive virtual worlds to increase the real world, opens up so many possibilities, that's what makes me want to work all days ".

For the moment that said, the Internet is not ready for the metaverse and wanting to put your head in a virtual universe risks being expensive economically and ecologically.

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