Since 2017, Huawei has brought the concept of end-side AI computing power into the industry. At that time, there were many people discussing whether end-side AI computing was necessary, whether it had prospects, and so on. In the blink of an eye, four years have passed, and the AI processing ability of the end side has become an essential ability of every chip manufacturer and mobile terminal manufacturer, and AI computing power has also become a compulsory course for mainstream category developers such as video, games, social networking, and travel.
Four years have proved the necessity of end-side AI, and also demonstrated the evolution of this field in the direction of platform, technology, ecology and so on. In order to allow developers to better call the end-side AI computing power and operators, Huawei also released the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation for the development of the enabling platform when it enters the field of end-side AI. While consumers are becoming familiar with AI applications and developers are relying on AI technology, the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has not stopped evolving, constantly bringing developers one intelligent surprise after another.
There is a consensus in the field of technology: we often overestimate a momentary change and underestimate the long time change. Understand that a technological change should not focus on one point, but should look down on continuous, secondary changes over time. With the development journey of HUAWEI HiAI Foundation, we can see the real situation of AI development needs and technology updates, and look at the evolutionary theory of end-side AI.
At this moment in the fifth year of entering the end-side AI, the developer's wonderful journey with the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has just begun.
End-side AI has evolved: the evolution of development needs
A few years ago, most developers were still very unfamiliar with AI capabilities, and ai was more about exploration and development. Nowadays, AI technology has penetrated into all aspects of application development and has become an indispensable capability. After accumulating development experience and reaching a development consensus, developers' needs for AI computing power and technology empowerment have also undergone many changes. Changes in development demand have led to changes in development platforms and technology supply, and a side-side AI evolution theory has begun.
On the whole, we can see the following significant upgrades in the development requirements of end-side AI.
1. Changes in industry concerns: The current direction of AI technology in application development is becoming more and more clear, and key industries are gradually becoming prominent. Areas such as video scoring and game hdization have become the focus of attention, and the needs and pain points of developers in these areas that require heavy AI participation are becoming more and more obvious.
2. Model structure upgrade: With the upgrading of requirements, developers' optimization and upgrading needs for model structure are continuously strengthened. How to optimize the model structure and make complex and powerful models run on the end side has become a topic of common concern for developers.
3. Update speed has requirements: AI development is constantly changing, and developers have new requirements for the upgrade and update speed of AI capabilities on the side. The original slow update of the end-side capability is no longer suitable for developers.
4. Diversification and ecology of empowerment methods: Developers have become accustomed to the communityization and ecology of AI developers on the cloud side and architecture side, but there are still obvious deficiencies in the empowerment and ecological solutions of developers on the end side. How to connect more diversified development empowerment channels on the end side is also an important pain point for developers.
Today, developers need to explore the broader industrial world with the help of end-side AI. The HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has also promoted the "triple evolution" of the end-side AI industry.
Software and hardware are fully mature: platform evolution
The first evolution of end-side AI is reflected in the development and maturity of the platform. Huawei HiAI Foundation has demonstrated the evolutionary ability and ecological vitality of mature platforms in terms of empowerment solutions, product forms, and key area solutions.
From the perspective of platform basic information, we can first see the growth and change of HUAWEI HiAI Foundation in terms of operator scale, enabling ports, and invocation scale. Quantitative changes accumulate qualitative changes, from the platform features, the core of HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has also undergone deep changes.
First of all, from the perspective of product form, HUAWEI HiAI Foundation and Huawei's all-scenario strategy have evolved simultaneously, expanding from supporting mobile phones to AI empowerment for all-scenario development, which better meets the development needs and multi-terminal strategies of developers.
From the perspective of computing power, HUAWEI HiAI Foundation was first based on the special computing power of NPU; in industrial practice and development, Huawei found that many development needs need collaborative computing to achieve the best intelligent effect. Nowadays, HUAWEI HiAI Foundation can support collaborative computing and flexible deployment of NPUs, GPUs and CPUs, so that more complex and figurative AI development needs can be effectively empowered.
In addition, we can see that the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has more targeted empowerment in specific areas of concern to the industry and has achieved industry-leading results. For example, it has realized and maintained the most advanced enabling capabilities in the industry on the key tracks of the video industry such as chaofen, built advantages that are difficult for other manufacturers to surpass, and incubated abundant cooperation cases and empowerment programs based on the advantages of specific industries. In the fields of images, videos, games, etc., huawei HiAI Foundation has built a better experience and lower comprehensive cost of end-side AI development empowerment advantages.
In multiple tracks such as all-scenario, computing collaboration and key areas, HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has built a unique platform advantage, and further into the technical space closely related to developers, HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has become a unique AI brush.
Providing Irreplaceable AI Creativity: Technological Evolution
The second evolution of end-side AI is reflected in the value of AI technology to developers. Developers can implement more AI tasks that would otherwise be impossible or difficult to accomplish in the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation. The HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has also become a unique smart choice for many developers.
The huawei HiAI Foundation's technology empowerment ideas are significantly different from other platforms in that they support developers' business docking needs far more than other chip platforms. The platform proactively provides more services for development and obtains as many developer needs and feedback as possible, and then continuously optimizes HUAWEI HiAI Foudation.
Through frequent demand docking, case cooperation, and the comprehensive use of Huawei's full-stack technology advantages, HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has built a technology empowerment solution that is closer to development practices and development needs.
From several directions, huawei HiAI Foundation has been consistent with the developer's position, needs, and upgrade route, so that AI technology can truly flow to the developer's canvas.
From the perspective of technological innovation, HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has broken many technical bottlenecks in end-side AI and achieved success in practice. For example, in the important field of overshoot, developers can work with HUAWEI HiAI Foundation to obtain high-intensity, low-cost super-score upgrades to provide better picture quality for video.
Huawei HiAI Foundation can effectively help developers reduce the cost of broadband usage and the traffic cost caused by cloud overshoot, so as to achieve high quality on the end side and not rely on network and cloud computing power. After the release of this capability, it quickly caused a shock in the industry. Video applications such as Youku, Huawei Video, Huya, and iQiyi have established super cooperation with HUAWEI HiAI Foundation.
In the video super-resolution cooperation, HUAWEI HiAI Foundation can help video applications achieve optimal fit of super-resolution calculations, and support video platforms to use larger and more complex models, thereby improving the user's intelligent experience. In contrast, large platform developers have achieved cost reduction, optimized effect, and avoided the investment and trial and error of self-developed algorithms; small and medium-sized developers can achieve access to the industry's powerful technical experience and achieve experience upgrades.
After baidu input method cooperated with HUAWEI HiAI Foundation, the end-side AI call performance was 25% higher than that of CPU, the computing resources were exclusive, the memory was saved by 22%, and the power consumption was reduced by 50%. In cooperation with HUAWEI HiAI Foundation, Kuaishou has realized the rapid deployment of video special effects AI functions on the end side, with 8 times higher performance, 50% lower power consumption and better computing accuracy. After partnering with HUAWEI HiAI Foundation, Beauty's image segmentation business has improved performance by 30% and reduced power consumption by 50%. With the blessing of HUAWEI HiAI Foundation, a video platform super-resolution service such as iQiyi and Youku, the super-resolution performance can be increased by up to 80% and the power consumption can be reduced by up to 45%.
These figures show that technological innovation and leadership make the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation a unique brush. When developers want to draw AI, they don't have to worry about the future and don't have to waste a lot of development costs. Seamless access to the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation is the best encounter.
End-cloud collaboration and high compatibility: ecological evolution
The third evolution of end-side AI is reflected in the continuous enhancement of platform compatibility and synergy, forming an ecological environment with strong tolerance. The communityization and ecology of end-side AI is being opened here.
After the platform advantages continue to accumulate and the technological evolution remains efficient, the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation pays more attention to ecological integrity and openness. On the one hand, huawei HiAI Foundation has built an effective cooperation mechanism and cooperative relationship with major domestic AI platforms and Internet manufacturers, and built an AI empowerment platform recognized by head players. On the other hand, the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has carried out intensive ecological and community construction, allowing more small and medium-sized developers to accurately find their own suitable ecological empowerment solutions, low-cost, high-quality access to end-side AI.
In the cooperation of the head players we can see two representative ecological cooperation models of the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation. In terms of platform cooperation and compatibility, the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has effectively docked with the algorithm platform of the algorithm framework BAT, so that developers can access the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation without feeling, thus realizing the mutual sharing of the platform ecology.
From the perspective of technical compatibility, HUAWEI HiAI Foundation can support 300+ general operators and is compatible with mainstream AI frameworks at home and abroad. The overall compatibility scheme is quite mature, no matter which platform framework developer uses, they can seamlessly access and use the capabilities of HUAWEI HiAI Foundation and obtain abundant technical support. For manufacturers with their own frameworks, they can dock with the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation's IR API at the framework layer and enable NPU acceleration on the Kirin platform; developers without a framework can directly use the offline DDK to complete the development of AI applications without costing compatibility.
On the other hand, the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation breaks the characteristics of the relatively slow evolution of end-side technology and realizes the coordinated evolution of end-side technology and developer needs. Through the innovation of end-cloud collaborative solutions, HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has placed the ability related to rapid algorithm evolution in the cloud, and developers can access the latest capabilities in real time without waiting for end-side upgrades, thus meeting the needs of rapid evolution of end-side AI.
The upgrade mode of end-cloud collaboration has effectively improved the communication and empowerment efficiency between HUAWEI HiAI Foundation and developers, enabled the software optimization of end-side AI to be improved, met the main demands of developers to quickly upgrade and efficiently improve technical capabilities, and also allowed developers' AI capabilities to be more widely adapted to old models, expanding the development market and improving user experience.
In the construction of community, the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation launched model Zoo. The goal of this platform is to help developers solve the pain points of end-side model optimization design through community form. Starting from the model optimization function, Model Zoo will also implement functions such as model scoring and community mutual assistance in the future, and ultimately hopes to build a unique ecosystem of end-side AI.
End-side AI, breaking through the singularity
Not long ago, the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation has broken through the industrial "singularity" of more than 60 billion daily calls. This figure means that massive smart businesses run every day under the framework of huawei HiAI Foundation, a platform that already covers a large number of developers and development needs. These industry needs are also continuously fed back to the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation team, which has become the driving force for further upgrading and evolution of the platform.
From the perspective of future trends, AI computing is an inevitable requirement for consumer terminal development, and it is also the evolutionary direction that developers value most. And AI computing does not come out, and fundamentally protecting user privacy and security is also an unchanging trend. With the efforts of HUAWEI HiAI Foundation, end-side AI computing has achieved continuous reduction in development costs and increasingly obvious industrial advantages.
60 billion calls per day can be said to be the result of platform evolution, technology evolution and ecological evolution promoted by all the above HUAWEI HiAI Foundation.
When Huawei began to promote the development of end-side AI, the industry actually had a lot of wait-and-see and doubts; today, end-side AI has become the consensus of the global mobile chip and smart terminal industry. Among them, the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation's exploration of "no man's land", the leadership of the industry, and the construction of the ecology can be described as indispensable. End-side AI continues to evolve and proves the possibility of continuous evolution, which is of great significance to the entire mobile industry.
For the mobile terminal industry, more and more manufacturers attach importance to AI, attach importance to self-developed technology, and find a new way for independent development in homogeneous competition.
For chip platforms, actively promoting software and hardware collaborative innovation, and working closely with application development, has become a new trend in recent years. Among them, the leading role of huawei HiAI Foundation should not be underestimated.
For developers, AI is no longer just a simple recognition ability call, but has become a new port that can comprehensively improve the application experience and make intelligence ubiquitous. They know that more possibilities can be found in AI, on the hardware side, in the HUAWEI HiAI Foundation.
If the five years of HUAWEI HiAI Foundation starting in 2017 are the "First Five-Year Plan", from the end-side AI from scratch; then five to ten years, the "Second Five-Year Plan" may mean that the end-side AI has moved from scale to strength, prosperity and inclusiveness.
A wonderful development journey is not over, and the ten-year covenant of end-side AI is still being fulfilled.
This "end-side AI evolution theory" has a logical and clear beginning, clear goals, and the next evolution story is not only in the hands of the platform itself, but also in the hands of many developers.