Thirty-five years of singing, for today's "elephant" volume of Huawei, how to continue to be a dancer? "Look up at the sky and walk with your head down", this is Huawei's choice to keep moving lightly and facing the future.
Exploring the innovation of "Pasteur Quadrant", close to front-end basic research, reconstructing basic theory, reconstructing architecture, and reconstructing software, Huawei constantly "looks up at the sky" to explore the future development direction; to see the direction, Huawei is firmly "walking with its head down" to meet customers' digital transformation demands, and by continuously strengthening innovation capabilities, serving an industry with a "legion" team can enable thousands of industries to digitize.
On the one hand, looking at the future with a forward-looking vision, on the other hand, going to the future with a down-to-earth approach, and on the other hand, creating a future driven by talents, this is the secret of Huawei's light dance.
Huawei Rotating Chairman Hu Houkun
>>>
Innovation must be sustained
It seems that every company often talks about innovation, especially for latecomers, which is a way to break through upwards. But for a large enterprise, in the face of market changes and competitive environment, it is often too late to turn around, but Huawei is an exception.
The key reason is innovation, and continuous innovation. In recent years, even in the face of operational difficulties, Huawei's investment in research and development has not decreased but has increased, from 13.2% of revenue in 2013 to 22.4% of revenue in 2021. R&D investment is not constrained by profits, and Huawei has carved the gene of innovation into its bones.
In the field of connectivity, define the 5.5G and F5.5G industry vision to achieve 10Gbps everywhere; in the computing field, redefine the node, basic software and data center-level system architecture to achieve performance multiplication; on the cloud, build a digital content production line MetaStudio, call million core rendering resources; in the terminal, build a human-centered full-scenario intelligent experience... At the Huawei Global Analyst Conference (HAS 2022), Houkun Hu, Huawei's rotating chairman, introduced Huawei's current industrial innovation direction.
Of course, these innovations must be to create value for customers. Taking MetaStudio as an example, the rendering resources of millions of cores on HUAWEI CLOUD are fully invoked, and in the past, a 90-minute 3D movie took 6 months to render, and it only takes 2 weeks to complete the use of MetaStudio. Further, MetaStudio has moved the whole process of film and television production such as editing, modeling, and synthesis to the cloud, so that film and television creators can seamlessly collaborate in different places, greatly improve production efficiency, and shorten the content production cycle of a blockbuster movie from a few years to several months.
Innovation is based on the present, but also focused on the future. If the above-mentioned connectivity innovation, computing innovation, cloud service innovation, and terminal innovation are centered on current customer needs, then the four scientific assumptions and business visions mentioned by Dr. Zhou Hong, president of Huawei's Strategic Research Institute, the innovation exploration of the "Pasteur Quadrant", and the extraction of two basic scientific issues and 8 cutting-edge technology challenges that can be considered in the future, highlight Huawei's future insights.
Dr. Hong Zhou, President of Huawei Strategic Research Institute
"All of our current imaginations of the future may be conservative, and we can only make great strides if we boldly put forward assumptions, boldly put forward visions, and dare to break the existing theoretical and technical bottlenecks." Zhou Hong said.
So, how do you break the rules?
>>>
Basic research is patient
To answer the question above, let's first look at what is a "box"? Nyquist sampling theorem and Shannon's law in communications, computability theory and von Neumann architecture in computing, Moore's law in semiconductors... These classic theories and technologies are well known, but at the same time they were born decades or even more than a hundred years ago, and the application of these theories and technologies has begun to encounter bottlenecks under the expectation that global digitalization will exceed the development of "ten hundred times in ten years".
So, there are new assumptions and visions to drive breakthroughs. In this regard, Huawei's action is to dare to seek answers from front-end basic research.
First, expand the boundaries of cognition. Photon black holes, photophonons, phonons... Just listening to these names is enough to burn the brain of basic science and cutting-edge technology, Huawei hopes to explore with industry and academia, and make application breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, biology and other fields. For example, by calculating to predict the characteristics of matter, in 2017, scientists discovered the structure of superhard tungsten pentaboride through calculations, solving the problem that has plagued the scientific community for nearly 60 years; in 2019, scientists found that thorium ten hydride has amazing high-temperature superconductivity at a pressure of 850,000 atmospheres, and the critical temperature reaches -112 degrees Celsius. With better computational chemistry, it is possible to discover or invent better catalysts, chemicals, biologicals and vaccines.
Second, expand the limits of perception. Zhou Hong believes that in this regard, we need to learn from the biological community, for example, in vision, some spider eyes far exceed the human eye in the outline of objects and motion calculations, and in the sense of smell, the ability of dog noses to distinguish odors is more than 1,000 times that of humans. So in terms of perception, people still have a lot of work to do. For example, the development of new nervous system brain-computer interfaces and muscle-computer interfaces to better coordinate with machines; the development of virtual and real fusion of new experiences in the digital world, such as 3D display and virtual touch, to help "see the real, touch the real" in the digital world.
Third, explore new computing modes and implementation methods. For example, in communications, can we extend from the traditional linear Fourier transform to the nonlinear inverse scattering transformation to better match future applications? In AI, can we further develop mathematical logic calculation mode, geometric manifold calculation mode, game calculation mode, etc.? In matrix computing, exploring advanced algorithms with lower computational complexity, Zhou Hong pointed out that a few months ago our mathematicians invented a newer algorithm that reduced the complexity to the power of n to the power of 2.28, which means that for n= 1 million, the computational complexity will be further reduced by about 45%. From this perspective, it is necessary to develop adaptive and efficient computing models and create new architectures and components, rather than being limited by traditional computability theories and von Neumann architectures.
Fourth, break through the assumptions of Shannon's law and explore information communication in a larger space-time. Theoretically, for example, if we assume that the world has a priori knowledge and memory, we might jump out of the limits of Shannon's 1/2/3 law. In engineering, a quantum cascaded laser can generate hundreds of wavelengths at the same time, achieving hundreds of T of traffic; in the future, if we can make a high-heavy frequency attosecond laser, it may even generate millions of T of traffic. If these technologies can be grafted into the wireless and optical fields, can they improve communication performance thousands of times?
Of course, these assumptions are not to look up at the stars aimlessly, but to better draw a blueprint, and from scientific assumptions to open up the business vision, you can obtain business, customer and user innovation and create value. In this regard, Huawei's choice is to dare to seek answers from front-end basic research, and it hopes to explore the "Pasteur Quadrant" innovation with partners to expand scientific understanding and create application value.
Some people say that basic scientific research is a lonely track that requires a strong "heart", so this heart must be patience. "The closer you get to front-end assumptions, visions, and basic science, the more patience is needed." As a Huawei scientist, Zhou Hong maintained this patience.
>>>
Rely on talent, poke the sky upwards, and root down
With patience to explore basic science, another long-term action of Huawei is the talent strategy. Hu Houkun pointed out, "At Huawei, when it comes to innovation, the first thing we think of is top talents. We hope to attract world-class talents with world-class problems to meet challenges together and promote scientific and technological progress. "Up to the sky, down to the roots, a few days ago, Huawei once again for the global recruitment of talented teenagers the news brushed the screen, obviously, Huawei's purpose is to provide the world's most difficult subjects, a powerful platform and enough resources to support geniuses to explore."
Therefore, talent strategy is the core of Huawei's dance and is Huawei's long-term cause. The desire for and respect for talents accompanies huawei's growth core, whether it is looking up at the sky or walking with its head down, it is inseparable from talent leadership. At the analyst conference, Hu Houkun repeatedly mentioned Huawei's innovation ability, and it is clear that behind this, talent is the source of Huawei's continuous innovation.
Further, to break the bottlenecks and rules and regulations for the future, it is more dependent on talents to "drag the world forward" to solve world-class problems.
Just like Zhou Hong's ten major problems and challenges for the future: how does the machine perceive the world, and can it build a model suitable for the machine to understand the world? How to understand the physiological model of man, especially the operation mechanism of the eight subsystems of the human body, as well as human intention and intelligence? How to develop new perception and control capabilities on the human-computer interface, such as brain-computer and muscle-computer interface, 3D display, virtual touch, smell, taste, etc., they involve basic science and system engineering, software and hardware and other cutting-edge technology challenges, waiting for the world's outstanding talents to overcome, with the wisdom and synergy of the future!
Without reservation to absorb talents and provide a stage for talents, Huawei's special feature is to continue to lay the cornerstone of talents and constantly explore the unknown.
finish
Good-looking people are watching