In 2007, Thomas Friedman described the major changes taking place in the contemporary world in "The World is Flat": lightning-fast advances in technology and communications have made people around the world closer to each other than ever before.
Technology has flattened the world, on the one hand, breaking the boundaries of competition, and the level of digitalization has become a watershed in competition: countries, regions and enterprises with stronger digital capabilities have obviously developed faster; on the other hand, it has also brought new opportunities for the development of the digital economy, which is not the credit of a single digital technology, but the integration of multiple technologies.
During the Huawei All-Connected Conference in September last year, Huawei officially released the "Intelligent World 2030" report for the next decade, including 1 main report and 4 industry reports, which put forward 8 macro prospects for the future and forecast data for 32 indicators, including thinking about technology integration.
At the Intelligent World 2030 Forum, the 2022 Global Analyst Conference on April 27, we also saw the convergence of networking, computing, and AI technologies, shaping the "digital pedestal" for the upcoming smart world of 2030.
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Cross-border integration of technology creates a foundation for an intelligent world
"System Theory" believes that a system is composed of a number of interrelated, interactive, and mutually influencing organizational parts and has certain functions. From the perspective of the system, if the system is decomposed into parts and a part is studied separately, even if each part is studied clearly, it will not answer the problem of the integrity of the system.
Obviously, the concept of "System Theory" is a good expression of the technical logic of the digital age: a single technology always has limitations when it comes to landing, or industrial digitalization. A more coordinated way of evolution is actually integrated development.
The convergence of various technologies requires excellent connections in the first place. Gai Gang, President of Huawei's ICT Strategy and Business Development Department, said, "We predict that by 2030, the number of global connections will reach 200 billion, the per capita wireless cellular traffic will increase by 40 times, and the global penetration rate of home broadband users in gigabits and above will increase by 50 times. In 2030, the interaction between the physical world and the virtual world will reach a whole new height. Surreal, immersive and extreme experiences will be everywhere. ”
In fact, the network is the key to the foundation of digital infrastructure, and the maturity of connectivity technology lays the foundation for innovation in all digital technologies. On top of this, more innovation can continue to emerge, more integration.
We see that cross-border integration innovation of connection and computing has been very common, taking data centers as an example, in many high computing power scenarios, 0.1% of network packet loss will cause 50% of the computing power loss, to solve the problem of packet loss inside the data center has become a problem in the industry. Huawei has brought intelligent lossless algorithms and adaptive routing technology into the data center, which can achieve zero packet loss of 270,000 servers and support the efficient release of 100% of our computing power. This is a model of cross-border integration of technology.
The future innovation proposed by Jiang Tao, vice president of Huawei's computing product line, is mainly in three directions: architecture innovation, software innovation, and system-level innovation. System innovation also represents a direction of technology integration, "only the application innovation of computing, storage, network, energy and other capabilities of the whole site can truly solve the problem of supply of computing power for the future 2030." "Based on this, from compute, storage, networking to energy, all the underlying infrastructure will become a new combination, and the model of system innovation will become a base."
In the "4+1" AI For proposed by IEEE Fellow and Pengcheng Cloud Brain Chief Designer Tian Yonghong, the value of a technology integration can also be felt. "We pursue AI ForInteresting, it is the key bridge of connection, enterprises in different application scenarios to apply AI, in order to make AI inclusive, in order to help us achieve the ultimate goal OF AI For Life, life should be better."
In other words, after moving from the basic technology of networking and computing to the technology of AI, which is closer to the application, the fusion is not simply the integration of technology, but also the integration of technology and scene, scene and scene. In the scene, the integration of technology has the greatest value for the experience of the application, and this is also the direction of the digital transformation of the industry.
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Low-carbon and digital synergy, sustainable development
In addition to the integration of digital technology, in fact, we have also seen many other fields of technology also began to integrate with digital technology, towards integration and innovation, low-carbon technology is a very typical example.
As Gai Gang said, "In the next decade or more, digitalization and low carbonization are the two most important trends in the development of human society, and they are also the two most important opportunities." Digitalization and low-carbonization are the unity of mutual drive and mutual promotion, and the dual engines to promote the green development of human society. ”
Hu Houkun, huawei's rotating chairman, told a case: in a clean energy base in Qinghai Gonghe, by introducing cloud and AI technologies to photovoltaic power generation, the entire power plant has increased the power generation capacity by 2%, and the operation and maintenance efficiency has also increased by 50%. This means that digitalization can accelerate the realization of low carbon, and the combination of ICT technology 5G, AI and cloud computing and power electronics technology has accelerated the development of the green energy industry.
On the other hand, low carbonization itself can also stimulate the potential of digitalization. It is reported that some operators have reconstructed sites through green energy technology, and the proportion of solar power generation has exceeded 50%, which has greatly reduced the cost of network construction for operators. In the future, abundant green energy can enable digital infrastructure such as 5G and cloud data centers to better meet the digital transformation needs of thousands of industries.
In Jiang Tao's view, green innovation will also rely on ICT technology. For example, from the perspective of improving the utilization rate of computing power, through the full-stack collaboration of software and hardware, the centralized scheduling of the computing power network, to achieve nationwide computing power collaboration, improve the utilization rate of computing power by 50%-80%, according to expert calculations: through the "East And West" project, by 2025, the national data center can save 30 million tons of standard coal energy consumption.
Furthermore, according to research by the Global Association for the Advancement of Electronic Sustainability (GeSI), digital technologies could help the industry reduce carbon emissions by 20% over the next 10 years. For example, the introduction of AI technology in power dispatching in the future can achieve accurate prediction of photovoltaic and wind power generation, while supporting the power grid to achieve intelligent dispatch, improving the new energy consumption ratio, and helping the power industry achieve energy conservation and emission reduction.
From the perspective of the digital economy, the proposal of the national double carbon strategy means that the real economy will undergo a round of adjustment, and the entire industrial chain will usher in the era of low energy consumption, low emissions and high efficiency. The vision of the intelligent world 2030 is exactly in line with the time point of carbon peaking in 2030, which also means that before 2030, the integration of digitalization and low carbon will continue to accelerate and brew greater market opportunities.
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Call for industry synergy and go to 2030
2030 is not the 2030 of an industry, or a company. The future of the intelligent world belongs to the entire industry. Huawei's release of the "Intelligent World 2030" report is essentially to awaken the entire industry's awareness of the future direction of technology development, and to jointly move towards 2030 through inter-industry collaboration.
Tian Yonghong proposed, "A good vision, there must be a good cooperation mechanism, open cooperation." Because this is not the vision of one person, or of an organization, it is a vision of serving all of humanity. We also hope to create a good environment so that different enterprises, different institutions, and different researchers can move towards the same goal and move towards a green and intelligent world. ”
Indeed, we have seen that during the COVID-19 epidemic, the rapid connection between various systems, the wide application of digital technologies such as cloud computing, and the integration of technology and scenarios have formed a good means of epidemic prevention and control. This is what we want to see in industrial cooperation, a more unified intelligent world of the future.
From Huawei's point of view, we also hope that the industry is open. Jiang Tao said, "Computing itself is an ecological industry, and we also rely on the joint efforts of ecological partners, and Huawei will practice the ecological strategy of hardware openness, software open source, enabling partners, and talent development." We also adhere to the practice of partner priority, so that partners can continue to achieve business success, and enhance the competitiveness of partners, together to expand the computing industry, to contribute to the digital economy. ”
2030 is actually not far away from us. The torrent of time will take us forward continuously, with the continuous coordination and cross-border of technology, the continuous integration of scenes, the door of the intelligent world is also slowly thinking that we have opened.