Huawei Guo Ping: Direction, reconstruction, value, continue to survive and seek development in 2022

On March 28, Huawei released its 2021 annual report, which shows that Huawei's overall operation is stable, achieving global sales revenue of 636.8 billion yuan and net profit of 113.7 billion yuan, an increase of 75.9% year-on-year. Facing the future, Huawei will continue to increase its R&D investment, reaching RMB142.7 billion in R&D in 2021, accounting for 22.4% of its annual revenue, and its cumulative R&D investment in the past decade will exceed RMB845 billion.

At the press conference, Guo Ping, huawei's rotating chairman, said that many friends are concerned about what Huawei is doing, whether Huawei is competitive in the future to help customers achieve commercial success, so he introduced it to everyone from a business perspective.

"We survived in 2021. However, the problems we face are not yet fully resolved. In 2022, we will continue to strive for survival and development. Guo Ping said.

According to reports, in the future, Huawei's survival and development will rely on continuous strong investment in the field of research and development. In the past few years, Huawei has carried out a lot of engineering and technological innovation in research and development, and Huawei is also enhancing breakthrough research in basic science and cutting-edge technologies. Huawei's R & D investment reached a record high last year, facing the future, Huawei will continue to maintain a strong investment, "Huawei's problems can not be solved by saving food and clothing, Huawei to optimize the system architecture, improve software performance and explore theory." At the same time, by solving the technical and technological problems, we will build a highly credible and reliable supply chain. ”

Guo Ping pointed out that Huawei is now facing difficulties in obtaining advanced technology. To survive, we must increase strategic investment, and actively seek systematic breakthroughs when a single point of technology leadership encounters difficulties. Just like this magnificent building, what kind of stone to choose is determined by the overall design, and the design of various frame structures should also serve the overall building. Simply put, there are two aspects: the design of the system drive components; the framework is born for the system.

Talent, scientific research and innovation spirit are the three major elements on which Huawei depends for its survival and development. Huawei summarized the most challenging issues in the ICT industry and attracted the world's best talents and world-class talents to work together to overcome these world-class problems. Huawei proposes to let the geniuses come in droves, let the experts play their full role in key areas, make the best use of their talents, let them rampage in the scientific field, use the concentration of talents to fight against the difficulty of technology, and continue to promote the innovation of theory, architecture and software. In Forbes' 2021 ranking of the world's best employers, Huawei ranked eighth.

Guo Ping said that Huawei is also with an open mind to achieve the layout of technical capabilities in the world, close to the academic source, cooperation with global universities, the establishment of joint laboratories, Huawei has established a search, traction, open, speculative "Huang Danian Tea Thinking House" near the school, open to the whole society. This is also a channel for Huawei scientists to communicate, inspire progress in science and technology, and jointly build a beacon for the future.

Guo Ping also focused on some of Huawei's ideas in technology: Huawei is working hard to promote the reconstruction of basic theory, architecture and software.

The first is theoretical reconstruction, Huawei continues to explore the theory and technology of a new generation of MIMO and wireless AI, further approaching the Shannon limit. At the same time, Huawei is also studying new theories such as semantic communication, trying to surpass Shannon's limits and open up a broad space for communication. Huawei's exploration at the forefront of communication theory has begun to place orders along the way. Massive MIMO's innovative product, MetaAAU, can improve the up-and-down coverage of small T by 30% and reduce energy consumption by about 30%.

The second is architecture reconstruction, in the field of communications, the wireless and optical technologies are fully coordinated, and the photoelectric fusion technology is introduced to solve the problems of wireless ultra-high frequency, ultra-high bandwidth, and ultra-high speed, and break through the process bottleneck faced by future chips. In terms of computing architecture, artificial intelligence and big data applications are booming, but the traditional computing architecture is still CPU-centric, which is a contradiction, Huawei is designing a peer-to-peer architecture, using the Lingqu bus, so that GPUs, NPUs and new hardware can support the great development of AI services.

The third is software reconstruction, facing the future, although the outbreak of AI, the demand for computing power has increased sharply, but the progress of hardware technology is slowing down. To this end, Huawei has raised the priority of software, sorted out the technical system of basic software, and more effectively exerted the computing power potential of diversified hardware through Hongmeng and Euler. The MIMO product architecture helps scientists and engineers dramatically improve development efficiency. Huawei has a software multiplication plan, so that the number of wireless cells and scheduling users and other key indicators can be doubled, the user access performance of ether switches can be increased by 3 times, and optical transmission can also greatly improve Huawei's world-leading capabilities. This allows Huawei to maintain the competitiveness of world-class products under extremely difficult circumstances.

"Although Huawei's three reconstructions are still underway, some theoretical and architectural breakthroughs have begun to lay eggs along the way. Due to the limitation of some material processes, Huawei has to choose alternative ways to achieve the original functions, such as base station products to achieve the double optimization of performance and energy saving, it is necessary to consider the most energy-consuming part, that is, the power amplifier device of the RF unit. Huawei uses gallium nitride material to manufacture power amplifiers, and the amplification efficiency of high-frequency signals is much higher than that of traditional semiconductor materials represented by LDMOS, which can reduce energy consumption by 20%. In optical communications, Huawei has achieved breakthroughs in LCOS, digital optical path, and hologram algorithms to achieve a full-light jump direct. "Huawei's continuous investment in root technology will realize the product functions on the basis of maintaining our continuous leading competitiveness."

Data centers are booming, and in this area, Huawei is planning for the future, hoping to continue to lead in the next generation of systems.

At present, the computing structure should be said to use the Lingqu bus to allow GPUs and NPUs to support the great development of AI services with new hardware, and Huawei expects that after this design is extended from a single server to a data center, the third-generation cluster computing will be able to increase the computing power by 5-10 times.

In terms of products and systems, Huawei has also continued to increase investment in ecology, compared with traditional industries, HUAWEI CLOUD, computing, smart terminals, and smart cars cannot succeed without developers and the vast number of ecological partners. Guo Ping said that in the past few years, despite facing many challenges, Huawei has still won the love and support of more than 8 million developers around the world, who are using Huawei's open platform, open source software and rich tools to improve development capabilities and efficiency. In terms of ICT systems, Huawei donated OpenEuler, supported the commercial use of 1 million sets, continued to work hard in the artificial intelligence framework, the current download volume has exceeded one million, the performance has gradually been recognized by the scientific community, Huawei will continue to steadily advance.

In terms of terminals, HarmonyOS devices have reached 220 million units last year, and third-party ecological devices have also shipped more than 115 million. In the future, Huawei will bring together the entire industry to build a prosperous ecosystem of Hongmeng, Euler, and Shengsi.

"It should be said that Huawei is also undergoing a new round of industrial restructuring, adapting to the current trend of digitalization, intelligence and carbon neutrality, and better serving our corresponding customer base to deliver value." Guo Ping said.

Speaking of solutions for smart auto parts, Guo Ping reiterated that Huawei does not build cars, but it is necessary to deeply integrate Huawei's ICT capabilities accumulated over more than 30 years with the automotive industry to help car companies build and sell good cars. Huawei has built seven smart car solutions and listed more than 30 smart car parts to help Huawei's industry transform to intelligence. Huawei provides solutions for car companies through Huawei Inside and smart selection mode, and Huawei has carried out in-depth cooperation with many car companies at home and abroad to help customers build good cars and achieve commercial success. Under the new cooperation model of industrial division of labor, Huawei adheres to the development strategy of platform + ecology, and after more than two years of development, Huawei has established cooperative relations with more than 300 partners, and will further increase investment in ecology in the future, and work with partners to accelerate the progress of intelligent automotive industry.

On HUAWEI CLOUD, Huawei proposed a "everything is a service" strategy last year, first of all, infrastructure as a service, so that the business can be reached globally. At present, HUAWEI CLOUD has deployed 65 availability zones in 27 geographic regions around the world. Secondly, technology as a service, so that innovation is within reach, Huawei continues to open up the results of more than 10 billion US dollars of R&D investment every year and more than 30 years of our technology accumulation in the ICT field, in the form of cloud services, the leading technology is provided to customers, partners and developers in thousands of industries, and has created AI development production lines, software development production lines, etc., so that software development in all walks of life is simpler and faster, so that customers and developers do not have to repeatedly build wheels, focusing on customers' own business to innovate. Then there is the fact that experience is service, so that the good can be copied. HUAWEI CLOUD released Kaitian aPaaS, which precipitates Huawei's valuable experience in cooperation and innovation with various industries around the world over the years and digital transformation on our cloud platform, coordinates HUAWEI CLOUD's infrastructure and process IT, Huawei terminals, and various clouds, and classifies and aggregates the capabilities required by the industry into callable interface services, opens them to industry developers, and enables scenario-based innovation in the industry.

"Of course, we are still in a difficult period, and the three refactorings we envision have not yet been implemented and are still in the process of being made. We still have to fight for survival, and there are many, many difficulties to overcome. However, no matter how difficult it is, we must also unswervingly increase investment so that we can have a future. Guo Ping finally said.