Leading Innovation in Digital Infrastructure

ByDavid Wang

September 24, 2021

David Wang

Hello, Intelligent World!

Two days ago, Huawei released the Intelligent World 2030 white paper. The paper shows Huawei’s thoughts and outlook for the next decade. Intelligent World 2030 paints a picture of an incredible intelligent world.

By 2030, we’ll have sustainable “green” diets, more livable cities, and improved quality of life. Vehicles will become a mobile “third space” and more people will enter the MetaVerse.

Now, I can’t wait to say: Hello, intelligent world!

Infrastructure has been vital at every stage of human development. And at each stage, what flows through its pipelines represents what we value. In an agricultural society, pipelines carry water. In an industrial society, pipelines carry oil. And in an intelligent society, pipelines carry data. According to Huawei’s GIV forecasts, by 2030, global connections will top 200 billion; monthly data per cellular user will grow 40 times to 600 gigabytes; worldwide general computing volume will grow 10 times over, and the data generated will increase by 23 times, reaching one yottabyte for the first time.

The time for building solid digital infrastructure is now!

Our innovation in digital infrastructure is driven by both value and vision. We are now “diving deep” into digital, and we expect three big changes:

  1. Digital transformation will become central to office work.
  2. Production will go fully digital.
  3. Digital technologies will benefit more enterprises.

This will create new requirements and challenges.

Digital infrastructure includes sensing, connectivity, storage, and computing,

as well as foundational technologies and software ecosystems. Today, I’ve brought in colleagues, customers, and partners from around the world, to share seven scenarios that are flourishing because of Huawei’s innovative products and solutions.

Of all office scenarios, digital meeting rooms, especially real-time online collaboration, have some of the highest requirements for digital infrastructure. Today, I’d like to introduce Huawei’s newest AirEngine, the industry’s fastest Wi-Fi 6E product.

We have also used a lot of cutting-edge tech like smart antennas to enable gigabit everywhere and connect everything. When used with Huawei IdeaHub, the next-gen product specially made for smart offices, you can supercharge your digital meeting room experience. Its 6-in-1 design and powerful collaboration capabilities let people from around the world hear every word and see every expression as if they were right there in the room with you. This will usher in an era of frictionless communication and collaboration.

At Huawei, we call AirEngine and IdeaHub our “Office Twins”. Together, they will inspire more big ideas in digital offices.

Optical fiber networks are critical for the information society. Huawei has long been committed to research and technological innovation in the optical industry. We have achieved great things through optical communications. Now, we are applying highly reliable optical technologies to fiber sensing to create more value for industry digital transformation.

Today, we present the industry’s most accurate intelligent optical sensor: The Huawei OptiXsense.

Intelligent optical sensing uses fiber to detect and analyze lasers. This allows it to precisely measure the stress, vibration, and temperature of the fibers.

This product is ideal for managing oil and gas pipelines. It can make inspections more efficient, make unmanned intelligent inspection possible, and help the industry go digital. We are also working on a series of products for other domains, like water quality monitoring.

Uncertainty makes us anxious. Network uncertainty similarly impacts the digitalization of manufacturing. So how do we remove uncertainty in data transmission networks? The IP industry has spent 40 years trying to answer this question.

Today, Huawei has an answer: The industry’s first deterministic IP network solution.

Jitter is the root cause of network uncertainty. It’s like traffic jams that make it impossible to predict when the next bus will arrive. Through IP system engineering and algorithm innovation, Huawei has not only managed to minimize network jitter.

We’ve also achieved large-scale, ultra-long-distance networking. In our live network stress tests we managed to keep jitter within 30 microseconds on a 2,000-km network with multi-hop IP nodes. The latency of each node was down to microseconds. These kinds of results have never been seen before.

This solution ensures deterministic latency and enables large-scale networking for traditional industrial networks. The solution also allows precise remote control

of production devices, making “lights-out” digital factories a reality.

If we want to achieve carbon neutrality, power grids need digital and intelligent transformation. And power grid digitalization needs 100% reliable communications networks.

Currently, in digital grid construction, we have OTN solutions for power transmission,

but none specifically for distribution or for end-to-end reliability. So, we’ve created something truly groundbreaking to solve this issue: H-OTN.

This is the industry’s first converged device packed with multiple optical technologies and a brand-new architecture. It combines OTN and PON by breaking down the technical barriers between them.

Power grid digitalization will benefit massively from its end-to-end reliability, ultra-low latency, and simplified O&M. H-OTN is perfect for more than just digital power grids.

Any digitalized industry that depends on high-reliability networks, like transportation, oil, and gas, will see clear value in H-OTN.

The key to cross-region, electricity transmission is ultra-high voltage, power transmission technologies. So then what’s the key to cross-region compute scheduling? Breakthrough algorithms.

Thanks to breakthrough algorithms, today, we can bring you the industry’s best performing IP network solution for cross-region compute scheduling.

This solution combines our best CloudEngine switches in data centers and NetEngine routers on WANs.

In data centers, the intelligent & lossless algorithm 2.0 can network up to 270,000 servers.

This is four times the industry average. It also guarantees zero packet loss and reduces latency by 25%. The computing efficiency of a Huawei IP network is even 93% higher than the leading competitor’s over the same number of servers. On WANs, the intelligent cloud graph algorithm intelligently routes by cloud service type and cloud-network resource factor, improving transmission efficiency by 30%.

These solutions optimize scheduling throughout compute generation and transmission. Simply put, they minimize packet loss and maximize computing performance. This solution can be applied to cross-region computing, and many more scenarios.

These days, we are exploring the universe in R&D data centers for energy, life sciences, and high-performance computing. We are moving towards an era of High-Performance Data Analytics that integrates HPC, big data, and AI. This level of data analytics creates challenges for data storage: performance, protocols, and capacity. So today, we are officially announcing OceanStor Pacific, the industry’s first distributed storage for HPDA.

Huawei OceanStor Pacific represents huge breakthroughs in areas like: data flows adaptive to large and small I/O, converged indexing for unstructured data, and ultra-high-density hardware & EC algorithms.

OceanStor Pacific breaks the performance, protocol, and capacity barriers that limit HPDA. A single unit can make data analytics more efficient by supporting: hybrid workloads across high-performance computing, big data analytics, and AI computing.

Affordable computing power is the key to diving into digital. But first, computing power needs to be more accessible and better utilized. So today, we are unveiling our CC solution. This solution helps customers roll out industry leading public platforms that provide diversified computing power.

It is designed with three scenarios in mind:

  1. AI computing centers,
  2. high performance computing centers,
  3. and integrated big data centers.

The solution also has four advantages over traditional solutions:

First, the computing framework supports diverse scenarios, including AI, HPC, and big data. Second, it can be rolled out very rapidly. Its compact design and modular, prefab equipment rooms can even shorten rollout from 2 years to 6 months. Third, it boosts utilization by 50% to 80% by pooling and scheduling diverse computing resources.

Fourth, it’s simply easier to use, with a service platform that speeds up access from several weeks to minutes.

These advancements are all the result of our innovative engineering and architecture. For example, the new power supply and heat design that come with this solution are much more efficient.

This increases the computing power density per cabinet four to eight times over. Moreover, Huawei has also created the game-changing computing usage effectiveness index. This index will help drive development in the computing cluster sector. To achieve higher CUE, we have optimized: solvers, compilers, libraries, and energy supply systems.

As we look towards the future of digital infrastructure, we need to not only create new and innovative hardware, but also build a thriving software ecosystem.

The industry has already created a complete software ecosystem of: OS-es, languages, compilers, databases, AI frameworks, and apps.

But, there are three challenges we still need to address as we dive into digital.

First, the ecosystem will require a broader convergence of communications, information, and industrial technologies. Second, it will need to better adapt to diversified computing. Third, we will need an ecosystem that is shared, open-source, and jointly constructed.

With these new challenges in mind, Huawei will continue working with: partners, developers, and open source organizations from around the world.

Spoiler alert! On September 25, we will also be launching a core software ecosystem product and strategy.

Each and every R&D employee at Huawei lives and breathes innovation. No matter what comes our way, innovation will remain constant. Innovation, at its core, drives industry development and creates value for customers and the entire value chain.

To sum up, our innovation in digital infrastructure centers on:

  • Breakthroughs in basic theories and algorithms
  • Technology spillover
  • Technical architecture
  • Product architecture
  • Industry pace
  • Industry direction
  • Industry creation

We will remain committed to innovation and hold the lead in digital infrastructure.

Today, we’ve looked at seven of the scenarios where Huawei is innovating. We are excited to see how this rainbow of innovation will shape the future.

Just as a single beam unfolds into many colors, a single idea unfolds into many paths forward. This is the heart of innovation.


Disclaimer: Any views and/or opinions expressed in this post by individual authors or contributors are their personal views and/or opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views and/or opinions of Huawei Technologies.

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Posted in Corporate Posted in Corporate
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David Wang

Executive Director of the Board, Chairman of the ICT Infrastructure Management Board, Huawei Technologies

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