Gal Dalal wants to ease the commute for those who work from home - or the office.
The senior research scientist at NVIDIA, who is part of a 10-person lab in Israel, is using AI to reduce congestion on computer networks.
For laptop jockeys, a spinning circle of death - or worse, a frozen cursor - is as bad as a sea of red lights on the highway. Like rush hour, it's caused by a flood of travelers angling to get somewhere fast, crowding and sometimes colliding on the way.
AI at the Intersection Networks use congestion control to manage digital traffic. It's basically a set of rules embedded into network adapters and switches, but as the number of users on networks grows their conflicts can become too complex to anticipate.
AI promises to be a better traffic cop because it can see and respond to patterns as they develop. That's why Dalal is among many researchers around the world looking for ways to make networks smarter with reinforcement learning, a type of AI that rewards models when they find good solutions.
But until now, no one's come up with a practical approach for several reasons.
Racing the Clock Networks need to be both fast and fair so no request gets left behind. That's a tough balancing act when no one driver on the digital road can see the entire, ever-changing map of other drivers and their intended destinations.
And it's a race against the clock. To be effective, networks need to respond to situations in about a microsecond, that's one-millionth of a second.
To smooth traffic, the NVIDIA team created new reinforcement learning techniques inspired by state-of-the-art computer game AI and adapted them to the networking problem.
Part of their breakthrough, described in a 2021 paper, was coming up with an algorithm and a corresponding reward function for a balanced network based only on local information available to individual network streams. The algorithm enabled the team to create, train and run an AI model on their NVIDIA DGX system.
A Wow Factor Dalal recalls the meeting where a fellow Nvidian, Chen Tessler, showed the first chart plotting the model's results on a simulated InfiniBand data center network.
We were like, wow, ok, it works very nicely, said Dalal, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on reinforcement learning at Technion, Israel's prestigious technical university.
What was especially gratifying was we trained the model on just 32 network flows, and it nicely generalized what it learned to manage more than 8,000 flows with all sorts of intricate situations, so the machine was doing a much better job than preset rules, he added.
Reinforcement learning (purple) outperformed all rule-based congestion control algorithms in NVIDIA's tests. In fact, the algorithm delivered at least 1.5x better throughput and 4x lower latency than the best rule-based technique.
Since the paper's release, the work's won praise as a real-world application that shows the potential of reinforcement learning.
Processing AI in the Network The next big step, still a work in progress, is to design a version of the AI model that can run at microsecond speeds using the limited compute and memory resources in the network. Dalal described two paths forward.
His team is collaborating with the engineers designing NVIDIA BlueField DPUs to optimize the AI models for future hardware. BlueField DPUs aim to run inside the network an expanding set of communications jobs, offloading tasks from overburdened CPUs.
Separately, Dalal's team is distilling the essence of its AI model into a machine learning technique called boosting trees, a series of yes/no decisions that's nearly as smart but much simpler to run. The team aims to present its work later this year in a form that could be immediately adopted to ease network traffic.
A Timely Traffic Solution To date, Dalal has applied reinforcement learning to everything from autonomous vehicles to data center cooling and chip design. When NVIDIA acquired Mellanox in April 2020, the NVIDIA Israel researcher started collaborating with his new colleagues in the nearby networking group.
It made sense to apply our AI algorithms to the work of their congestion control teams, and now, two years later, the research is more mature, he said.
It's good timing. Recent reports of double-digit increases in Israel's car traffic since pre-pandemic times could encourage more people to work from home, driving up network congestion.
Luckily, an AI traffic cop is on the way.
Most recent headlines
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
23/04/2025
In 2024, Thomson's Total Turnout project played a pivotal role in elevating ethical election reporting and strengthening journalist safety in Pakistan.
Wit...
23/04/2025
We heard that you could use a little pick-me-up, so get ready to sh-sh-shake it ...
23/04/2025
WBD's Max viewership climbs 6%, boosted by The White Lotus' and The Pi...
23/04/2025
March shows a further downward trend of time spent watching television; following the February period when winter holidays contributed to a shorter time spent. ...
23/04/2025
During March, audiences in Mexico increased their streaming usage by 2.1 points compared to the previous month, accounting for 24.4% of TV viewing.
Disclaimer:...
23/04/2025
AANHPI audiences over index the total U.S. for share of time spent with Netflix ...
23/04/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Roku has announced new TVs, new streaming devices and significant upgrades to its user interface and software platforms that are designed to st...
23/04/2025
COW Job Listing: Opportunity for a Passionate Feature Film Editor - London-Based...
23/04/2025
RM Equity Partners Acquires MAGIX Software, Appoints Robert Rutkowski as CEO to ...
23/04/2025
All Men Are Wicked Western Shot with Blackmagic Design
Brie Clayton April 23, 2025
0 Comments
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4Ks were put to the test...
23/04/2025
NEW YORK Warner Bros. Discovery captured the largest monthly viewership increase among media distributors in March, according to Nielsen's latest Media Dist...
23/04/2025
MIAMI, Fla. Hemisphere Media Group has inked a deal with Samsung to launch WAPA+ as a FAST channel on Samsung TV Plus, a free TV streaming service that comes pr...
23/04/2025
HEBDEN BRIDGE, U.K. Calrec Audio has promoted Sid Stanley to managing director. Stanley, who joined the company in July 2018 as general manager, has been instru...
23/04/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Nathan A. Simington has announced a series of staff appointments made in March and April 2025, includi...
23/04/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has set its agenda for the Monday, April 28, 2025 Open Meeting, which is scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m. in th...
23/04/2025
COW Job Listing: Full-Time Video Editor, Remote
Brie Clayton April 22, 2025
0 Comments
Full-Time Video Editor
April 23, 2025COW Job Listing: Opportu...
23/04/2025
Berklee Abu Dhabi's Jazz Night Kicks off Global Celebration of Music and Cul...
23/04/2025
The E.W. Scripps Co. said it was shutting down its Scripps News over-the-air channel effective November 15 and eliminating at least 200 jobs....
23/04/2025
Audio Helps Chess.com Checkmate Cheating Matches are produced using REMI workflows By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 - 7:00 am
Print Th...
23/04/2025
Tech Focus: Intercoms, Part 1 - Key to Onsite, REMI, Hybrid Operations Intercoms keep increasingly disparate production locations together By Dan Daley, Audio ...
23/04/2025
Speaking my language: Bringing AI to the fore with real time audio translation f...
23/04/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Drops Trailer for Crime Drama Secrets We Keep, Set in ...
23/04/2025
Back to All News
World Book Day: Netflix Announces New TV Adaptations and Impac...
23/04/2025
Comscore to Announce First Quarter 2025 Financial ResultsRESTON, VA, April 23, 2025 Comscore, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOR), a trusted partner for planning, transacting...
23/04/2025
In an email to RT staff today, RT Director-General, Kevin Backhurst confirmed that RT 's Voluntary Exit Programme (VEP) 2025 is open from today, Wednesday...
23/04/2025
RT will air live coverage on television, radio and online of the funeral of Pope Francis which takes place this Saturday, 26 April 2025.
Beginning at 8.30am o...
23/04/2025
As AI models evolve and adoption grows, enterprises must perform a delicate balancing act to achieve maximum value.
That's because inference - the process ...
23/04/2025
Financial services has long been at the forefront of adopting technological innovations. Today, generative AI and agentic systems are redefining the industry, f...
23/04/2025
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Enables Michelin to focus on development of its ...
23/04/2025
AI is rapidly reshaping what's possible on a PC - whether for real-time image generation or voice-controlled workflows. As AI capabilities grow, so does the...
23/04/2025
An AI agent is only as accurate, relevant and timely as the data that powers it....
23/04/2025
April 23 2025, 02:00 (PDT) Dolby Ushers in the Future of In-car Entertainment at Auto Shanghai 2025
Dolby and industry partners demonstrate robust momentum ...
22/04/2025
Chloe Sevigny at the Magic Farm premiere (photo by Michael Hurcomb/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)...
22/04/2025
Music has the power to connect us to one another and to the world around us. Spotify is once again teaming up with the Museum for the United Nations - UN Live&#...
22/04/2025
Spotify has an unwavering commitment to supporting emerging artists across all g...
22/04/2025
This year marks the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, celebrated annually on April 22. On Spotify, listeners can explore a world of stories about our planet in our...
22/04/2025
McAvaney takes the lead for SBS' Coverage of the World Athletics Championshi...
22/04/2025
Virtual idols are poised to revolutionize entertainment, with the market projected to top $4 billion by 2029. Crafted with motion capture and game engine techno...
22/04/2025
As the audiovisual (AV) industry rapidly evolves, educational institutions are preparing the next generation of AV professionals for the future. Singapore Polyt...
22/04/2025
DENVER A new survey highlights just how important streaming has become in the entertainment landscape. Data compiled by Adtaxi shows streaming isnt just an alte...
22/04/2025
Samsung TV Plus has announced that it is now offering nearly 700 streaming channels in the U.S. more than any of the other major FAST platforms, the streaming s...
22/04/2025
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. New findings from Hub Research's latest survey on sports and television coverage reveal Amazon may have cracked the code of how to use tech...
22/04/2025
DETROIT Rockbridge Growth Equity has sold a controlling stake in GSTV to MidOcean Partners. Rockbridge will retain a minority stake in the video network which i...
22/04/2025
ATLANTA Gray Media has promoted Dana Neves to senior managing vice president, overseeing a number of Gray's television markets in the Northeast and Mid-Atla...
22/04/2025
The Infrastructure of Creative Flow: DigitalGlue's creative.space Wins NAB 2...
22/04/2025
iZotope unveils Equinox: the ultimate reverb plugin for Post and Music productio...
22/04/2025
Every way to export transparent videos from After Effects
Graham Quince April 21, 2025
0 Comments
In this video, I break down each way you can export ...
22/04/2025
April 22nd, 2025 Press Materials Available Here
Tribeca Festival 2025 Announces Short Film Lineup
Featuring How I Learned to Die Executive Produced by Osca...
Gal Dalal wants to ease the commute for those who work from home - or the office.
