Imagine a problem: from knotted rope notes, carved stone notes to oracle bones, from bronze inscriptions to bamboo inscriptions, and then from silk to paper writing... With the continuous evolution of the carrier of human information storage, what kind of explosion has our information volume experienced?
In today's digital economy era, the size of an e-book is about 1MB, an ordinary film and television work is about 1GB, the capacity of a 3D ultra-high-definition or VR film reaches dozens of G, the storage space of a mobile phone is between 128GB and 512GB, and the capacity of the hard disk has generally entered the TB level... What kind of digital explosion are we experiencing?
And looking to the future, what curve will this digital explosion continue to grow? At the 2022 Huawei Global Analyst Conference (HAS2022), which opened on April 26, Dr. Zhou Hong, President of Huawei Strategic Research Institute, proposed in his speech that global digitalization will develop at a rate that exceeds the "ten-year hundred-fold" rate.
For example, global mobile broadband data traffic has grown from 0.24 exabytes per month (EB) in 2010 to 60 exabytes per month in 2020, an increase of more than 250 times in 10 years. China's mobile broadband data traffic has grown from 0.033 exabytes per month in 2010 to 13 exabytes per month in 2020, an increase of more than 400 times in 10 years. Future growth will also continue and surpass this rate.
In view of this, Dr. Zhou Hong put forward four scientific hypotheses and business visions for the future in his speech, shared Huawei's innovative logic and basic research model, and released 10 issues and challenges for the future, presenting us with a reference path to explore the "endless frontier".
The "ten years and a hundred times" digital explosion has involved the whole body
It is often said that in the intelligent era of the Internet of Everything, data is the factor of production, computing power is productivity, network is the "main artery", and various intelligent devices are "labor", which reflects that behind the data explosion, there must be the rapid development of cloud and AI, broadband communication, intelligent devices and other perception, computing, and connection of all-dimensional digital technologies.
Dr. Zhou Hong pointed out that it is the comprehensive effect of these digital technologies that has greatly enriched the work and life of human beings and become a new driving force for economic growth. The pursuit of digital technology in the development of human society is endless, and in the future, it will be people's unremitting pursuit to achieve accurate health management through digital technology, widely use intelligent and automatic machinery and equipment to improve the quality and efficiency of production and life, and open a surreal experience that seamlessly integrates the virtual world and the real world.
Therefore, how to better meet the needs of human social development should become the driving force for continuous exploration of all walks of life, and also need the innovation and support of all dimensions of the information technology industry. Based on this, Huawei proposes the "ten-year 100-fold" growth of information technology as the basis for the company's thinking on the future, guiding its own basic and applied research from the beginning, and exchanging and discussing with the outside world.
Four scientific assumptions and business visions drive scientific breakthroughs
Obviously, based on the "ten years and a hundred times" growth model, many existing information technologies have encountered bottlenecks, and new visions and directions are needed to drive breakthroughs and achieve breakthroughs in theoretical innovation and basic research in order to create the next prosperous era of application innovation.
Based on this, Dr. Zhou Hong, who has long been in exchanges and discussions with scientists including Nobel Prize, Turing Award, and Fields Medal winners, "stands the day after tomorrow and looks at tomorrow", puts forward the four major scientific hypotheses and business visions in Huawei's eyes, and hopes to work with academia and industry to carry out future-oriented research and explore "endless frontiers".
The first scientific hypothesis revolves around the microscopic level, advocating the expansion of the boundaries of scientific cognition, the study of new matter and energy, phenomena and laws, and the better innovation of microscopic devices, technologies and methods, so as to realize the commercial vision of inventing new substances, energies and methods, molecules, catalysts and new devices.
It is not difficult to understand that many of our macro achievements today are based on the complex micro innovations of the past many years. For example, from perforated paper to tape, from HDD to SSD/flash memory, the iterative innovation of our computers in the past has always evolved with the upgrading of storage media and storage technology. The future development of cutting-edge information technology such as quantum communication and quantum computing is also inseparable from the storage and reading of information, so the research breakthrough of quantum memory and its key technologies is crucial.
The second scientific hypothesis revolves around the perceptual level, advocating the expansion of the ability to perceive the world and perceive itself, from approaching to transcending human perception, from alternative perception to extended perception, from human perception to machine perception, so as to realize the business vision of promoting physical health and building a digital world.
As we all know, perception is the basis of our understanding of the world, and it is the key input to convert the ever-changing analog signal into a digital signal of 0 and 1 alternating, but there are still many limitations in the ability of human beings to perceive the surrounding environment and their own bodies.
For example, human beings are far less advanced than the animals around them in many aspects of their perception of the external world, such as sight, hearing, and smell. Spiders in the object contour calculation and motion calculation far beyond the human eye, frog eyes are the highest sensitivity of single photon receiver, the future by improving the "spider eye" "frog eye" skeuomorphic and bionic degree, will help to further promote the development of automatic driving, single photon camera.
The third scientific hypothesis revolves around the computational level, advocating the exploration of computational models and efficient implementation methods that adapt to the goals and environment, so as to better understand the world, solve problems, and create value.
Looking at the processing of information, higher perception is important, but how to make more appropriate responses by improving computing power is also very critical. However, the deep learning and brain-like algorithms commonly pursued by the AI industry are mostly based on the thinking architecture of the human brain, and are not necessarily the best and universally applicable.
The way to break the game can also learn from nature and the biological world, absorbing their "single champion" abilities. For example, we can learn from the ideas of ant colony algorithm, particle swarm algorithm, and artificial bee colony algorithm to further develop cutting-edge research on bionic intelligent computing and bionic devices, so that computing power can better match environmental affairs and open up a new track for computing.
The fourth scientific hypothesis revolves around the level of connection, advocating a breakthrough in the assumptions of Shannon's theorem, exploring information technology in a world with prior knowledge and a larger space-time, so as to realize the business vision of building a global direct communication capability, integrating the real and virtual worlds, and enabling machines to be ubiquitous.
In the information processing process, the network connection is the bridge between information perception and computational processing, and once blocked, the consequences are unimaginable. Over the past few years, the rapid development of technologies such as multi-antenna in the field of wireless communication has been constantly approaching the limits of Shannon's theorem, and new theories need to be built to open up new development space.
For example, single-channel human-level holographic communication requires bandwidth of up to 1.9Tbps and latency as low as 1 to 5ms, while multi-channel multi-stream demand is higher. The current 1Gbps, theoretical 10Gbps 5G network is difficult to effectively meet, 6G network and later generations can achieve 100 times, 1000 times or higher improvement, will determine the success or failure of these extreme experience scenarios.
Frankly, even as a technoptist, many of the above four scientific assumptions and business visions are beyond my imagination. The "ten years and a hundred times" digital explosion has affected the whole body, which undoubtedly poses a severe challenge to the whole process of information collection, storage, processing and transmission. Leapfrog innovation at each of these levels can involve extremely complex interdisciplinary research.
As Melanie Michel, a pioneering scientist in complex systems, said in her masterpiece "Complexity", the study of complex systems spans the fields of biology, technology and sociology. Understanding complex systems requires entirely new approaches, transcending traditional scientific reductionism and redefining disciplines.
Physicist Jeffrey West's "law of scale" provides us with a possible solution to the problem. In his book Scale: The Simple Law of the Complex World, he argues that scale becomes the constant measure of everything in the world, and that by using the law of scale, the complex world becomes quantifiable, predictable, clear, and extremely unified.
In real life, we also "tend to overestimate the changes of one year but underestimate the changes of a decade." If we can all "stand in the day after tomorrow and look at tomorrow" and lead the quantitative change of factors with qualitative change of scale, then the complex world will also become clear and followable.
The Pasteur model innovates to bridge scientific hypotheses with business visions
How will Huawei explore the "endless frontier" based on the thinking basis of "ten hundred times" scale growth? Dr. Zhou Hong advocates that in basic scientific research, in addition to supporting the "Bohr Quadrant" innovation driven by the interest of scientists, he hopes to explore the "Pasteur Quadrant" innovation with partners, which not only expands scientific cognition, but also creates application value.
Under this logic, Huawei innovates around the context of "hypothetical innovation - vision innovation - basic science breakthrough - engineering technology innovation - business innovation" - outlining a grand blueprint with assumptions and visions, breaking through cognitive boundaries with basic science, improving product quality with engineering technology, and ultimately improving user experience, creating new business models and ecology, and creating industrial and social value.
In this chain, the closer to the innovation of front-end assumptions, visions and basic science, the more courage and patience are needed, and new scientific cognition can be most produced; and the application value created by the upgrading of scientific cognition is often a greater commercial and social value, which can stimulate and lead the next wave of technological and industrial change.
Focusing on the four scientific assumptions and business visions, focusing on the "Pasteur Quadrant" innovation model, Huawei has extracted two basic scientific issues and eight cutting-edge technology challenges for future consideration, in order to promote breakthroughs in basic theories and the invention of basic technologies, and to achieve the benign mutual promotion of scientific cognition and application value.
With assumptions and visions clear and problems and challenges already set, how can we better lead to "the day after tomorrow"? Dr. Zhou Hong stressed at the end of the sharing, "Today, all our imaginations of the future may be conservative, so we need to be more courageous. Huawei hopes to work with academia and industry to reconstruct basic theories, architectures, and software to explore and create the future together! ”