Zhi DongXi (public number: zhidxcom)
Author | Yang Chang
Edit | Desert Shadow
Zhidong reported on April 8 that recently, the authoritative AI performance benchmark platform MLPerf released the latest Inference v2.0 inference test results. This "war report" that has attracted the attention of the IT circle shows that the server company Ning Chang, which was founded in 2019, has caught up with many established international server manufacturers and won 59 firsts.
Not long ago, the well-known research company IDC released the latest "China Semi-annual Accelerated Computing Market (Second Half of 2021) Tracking", showing that Ningchang has ranked second in the sales list of China's accelerated server market.
With the introduction of policies related to "East Counting", green data centers, and the accelerated landing of technologies and applications such as artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing, the demand for server performance in various industries is constantly changing, and the sales of the domestic server market in 2021 will increase by 12.7% year-on-year to 25.09 billion US dollars. Various server companies are also constantly launching their own new products, and the domestic server market is fiercely competitive.
If you want to successfully break through in the domestic server market and seize more market share, it is not easy, so how did Ning Chang achieve such rapid development? In the future, with the changes and development of policies, industries, and technologies, what changes will there be in the domestic server market, and how will Ning Chang choose to meet these challenges? Zhidong interviewed Zhao Lei, Ning Chang's chief technology officer, to communicate and discuss the technical accumulation and strategic thinking behind Ning Chang's continuous breakthroughs.
First, won the first place in 59 MLPerf tests, and Ning Chang's three AI servers made great achievements
The MLPerf Inference v2.0 test was attended by dozens of server products from more than 10 international server vendors. Ningchang's X640 G40, X660 G45, X620 G40 ai servers won the first place in 59 of these tests.
As a player who was established and not long ago, how did Ning Chang slaughter the list? First of all, let's take a look at Ning Chang's star product - X640 G40 AI server.
The X640 G40 is a super AI server positioned for multiple application scenarios, and won the first overall performance of 10 types of test scenarios in all released products in the Datacenter group, and also the first in this test.
Let's take a look at the Ningchang X660 G45, which is equipped with NVIDIA A100 80GB Tensor Core GPU with NVLink ultra-high-speed interconnection capabilities, and has achieved a score of 0.44 in the Multi-Stream (multi-stream) scenario test of the SSD-Mobilenet (object detection mobile terminal) model test, ranking first.
It is reported that this achievement benefits from the two major advantages of the X660 G45: one is the high-speed interconnection of the GPU, and the other is that each GPU has exclusive network equipment and storage to ensure high bandwidth and low latency for data interaction and reading.
Finally, let's take a look at the Ningchang X620 G40. This server is equipped with 4 NVIDIA A2 Tensor Core GPUs, achieved the first place in the Datacenter group with 15 configurations, and almost all model tests have performed well, as a super AI inference server, X620 G40 can meet the needs of data neutralization and edge of inference, codec, virtualization and so on.
This year is the second year of the "14th Five-Year Plan", and new infrastructure such as intelligent computing centers is still the focus of national development. Since 2021, at least 26 cities in China have successively started or accelerated the construction of artificial intelligence computing power infrastructure such as artificial intelligence computing centers. With the start of the "East Counting West Calculation" project, the construction needs of a network of national computing power have become more urgent.
According to IDC data, the domestic AI market size has reached 2.18 billion US dollars, an increase of 42.2% year-on-year. Whether from the level of computing power infrastructure or the development of the AI industry, the demand for intelligent computing power in China's AI-related industries is correspondingly increasing.
The demand for AI servers that can provide intelligent computing power is also increasing. According to IDC forecasts, by 2026, the market size of China's accelerated computing servers, including AI servers such as GPUs, will reach $10.34 billion. Ningchang's X640 G40, X660 G45, X620 G40 these three AI servers belong to the server market prospects, relying on excellent performance, Ningchang has also achieved some outstanding results.
Second, "wisdom" as the core, Ning Changcheng second, three aspects of the factor blessing
After reading the MLPerf war report, let's take a look at another report card of Ning Chang. That is the data of the authoritative survey agency IDC: in the second half of 2021, Ning Chang accounted for 8.5% of the domestic accelerated computing server market share, and continued to rank second.
Zhao Lei, chief technology officer of Ningchang, said that from its inception to the present, Ningchang is in a state of steady rise, and the sales of Ningchang's general servers and GPU servers have increased every quarter.
For a long time, the domestic server market has been a market where giants have the right to speak, why is Ning Chang, as a young company, able to break through the AI server track? Combined with the dialogue with the person in charge of Ning Chang, we can see that there are roughly the following three factors:
First of all, in terms of technology, Ning Chang has accumulated for many years. Although Ningchang has only been established for more than 2 years, the technical team has more than ten years of technical accumulation, the average work experience of technical personnel in the server field is more than 8 years, and the main core technical personnel work experience is more than 10 years.
Taking GPU servers as an example, NVLink GPU servers can be regarded as one of the most high-end GPU servers on the market, and only 3 companies in China have launched 8-card NVLink GPU servers, which fully demonstrates that Ning Chang has deep research and development strength.
Secondly, in terms of users, Ningchang's target users are mainly large industry users, distributed in the Internet, financial telecommunications, manufacturing, medical and other fields.
At present, AI technology is accelerating the deep integration and application of AI technology in various industries, the scene is very changeable, the demand for customized computing power is also rising, and the corresponding demand for customized servers has increased sharply. According to IDC market research, the purchase share of customized products in the global server market has reached more than 30%.
Ningchang can quickly respond to the customized needs of users, and provide users with products that meet the requirements in the first time for the customized needs of new infrastructure and digital transformation, so as to achieve long-term cooperation.
Zhao Lei pointed out that Ning Chang received positive feedback and recognition from many users. Ningchang's enterprise users include some leading Internet companies and some mainstream AI companies in the industry. NingChang provides them with deep customization services or OEM/ODM level customization services.
The third aspect is that Ningchang has always kept up with policy needs and industry development trends. In the face of policies and measures actively promoted by countries such as double carbon and new data centers, Ning Changdu launched corresponding solutions at the first time.
For example, the state stipulates that the PUE value of newly built large and super large data centers cannot exceed 1.3; at the same time, the state is also actively promoting the "East Number West Calculation", which is a national integrated big data center collaborative innovation system computing power hub project. As a result, Ning Chang recently launched three new series of liquid cooled server products: 4U high-density server B5000 G4 LP, X660 G45 LP and general server R620 G40 LP 2U, taking into account performance and energy consumption.
Ningchang's B5000 G4 LP server has 8 computing nodes and adopts a new high-efficiency cold plate liquid cooling method to reduce energy consumption and improve performance. The X660 G45 LP, a 6U flagship liquid-cooled computing platform developed for AI deep learning training, can meet the thermal power consumption of 500W GPU heat dissipation requirements, and can be used with 200G network switching equipment to build GPU high-speed clusters. Ningchang's R620 G40 LP 2U server is compact and can be flexibly deployed on a cold board, which can be flexibly configured according to business needs.
In fact, for Ningchang, customization is the core positioning of Ningchang's server development. From the refined customization goal at the beginning of its establishment to the determination of the "Zhiding +" strategy of Ningchang in 2021 and the launch of the G40 series of products that take into account both performance and energy saving, Ningchang is constantly upgrading its customized strategic focus. Two of the three server products that Ning Chang participated in this MMLPerf benchmark are G40 series products.
Conclusion: The server market is growing steadily, and Ning Chang adheres to customization as the core
According to IDC data, the domestic server market sales reached 25.09 billion US dollars in 2021, an increase of 12.7% year-on-year, and in terms of accelerating servers, the chinese market size in 2021 increased by 68.6% year-on-year. On the whole, the demand for servers in the domestic market has grown steadily.
In 2022, with the digital and intelligent transformation of all walks of life into the deep water area, the AI server market competition will become more intense. As a new player in the server field, Ning Chang has achieved rapid growth and maintained a leading market share. If Ning Chang can continue to maintain the current development trend, it is expected to get more breakthroughs in the domestic server field.