Huawei’s Xu Zhijun suggested: Use domestic chips on a large scale

Any statement made by Huawei, which is at the forefront of public opinion, has attracted much attention from the outside world.

At the 2023 World Computing Conference held on September 15, Xu Zhijun, Vice Chairman and Rotating Chairman of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., revealed in a speech the latest progress of Huawei's computing strategy and his judgment on the ecological development direction of China's AI computing industry. .

Xu Zhijun said that China's computing industry is moving forward under continued strengthening pressure, and everything from design tools, materials, manufacturing equipment to chip products are currently affected.

"We should not have any illusions and should unswervingly build a sustainable computing industry ecosystem." Xu Zhijun believes that from the perspective of the development path of the computing industry, only large-scale use can promote the progress and development of the computing industry, and computing chips must Built on the basis of actually available chip manufacturing technology, the computing power infrastructure must be built on the basis of sustainably obtained computing chips and ecology.

"Currently, China's general computing industry is advancing in the form of three ecosystems. One is the X86 ecosystem, the other is the Pengteng ecosystem, and the other is the RISC-V open source ecosystem. The three ecosystems will run in parallel for a long time to come. Development ultimately depends on who can support us in facing the future," Xu Zhijun said.

According to public information, since Huawei officially announced its computing industry strategy in 2019, the "Kunpeng + Ascend" product portfolio has been regarded as a "challenger" to industry game rules.

Facing the future ecological structure, Huawei has two tough battles to fight. One is the Hongmeng Ecosystem for consumers and the Internet of Things, and the other is the "Kunpeng + Shengteng" combination for the computing industry. In the above-mentioned meeting, Xu Zhijun revealed that Huawei is accelerating the merger of Kunpeng Ecosystem and PKS Ecosystem into Pengteng Ecosystem with China Electronics, and is launching a series of software support policies around it to improve ecological development.

What does the computing industry include? Regarding this problem, Xu Zhijun said that everything related to computers can be incorporated into the computing industry, but the most difficult thing to solve, or what must be comprehensively broken through, is to return to the origin of computers.

In his view, the computing industry includes PCs, servers, operating systems, databases, and the processors, memory sticks, SSDs, HDDs, network cards, RAID cards, SSD controllers, network card chips, and RAID card chips that make up PCs and servers. These are the issues that most need to be addressed. "We couldn't even make network card chips and RAID card cores before, nor could we make power management chips for computers or servers, so we wanted to return to the basics of the computing industry."

Xu Zhijun believes that if China wants to develop its own processors, operating systems and databases, if it uses a third party, the outside world may obtain information on PCs and servers through its backdoors and vulnerabilities, and it may also be used as an attack vector. Attack other servers and PCs. "If our opponent has a doctorate level, and although we are domestically produced, we are still at the elementary school level, then it is quite simple to attack and steal information." Xu Zhijun said that localization does not mean security, only by improving capabilities Only then can you truly have the ability to be safe.

"Currently, more than 600 Chinese entities have been included in the U.S. government entity list." Xu Zhijun said, which covers chips, hardware, software, algorithms, and applications. At the same time, everything from design tools and materials to manufacturing equipment and chip products have been affected by export controls.

"In this case, a real problem is that we face many challenges in the long term. On the one hand, China's semiconductor manufacturing technology will be in a state of lagging behind and catching up for a long time. Huawei believes that this (state) will last for a long time because Only advanced processes can produce more advanced chips. On the other hand, due to U.S. export controls, it is challenging or simply impossible to obtain advanced chips or advanced computing systems from our many years of experience and expectations for the future. Judging from the judgment, this is long-term." Xu Zhijun said that he should not have any illusions about the future.

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"Although there is a gap between the chips, servers and PCs we produce compared to foreign production. But if we don't use it, this gap will always be a gap, and lagging behind will always be lagging behind. But if we use it on a large scale, it may pull and push We will slowly catch up with the progress of our entire technology and products." Xu Zhijun said that only large-scale use can drive the progress and development of the entire computing industry, drive the progress of CPUs, and drive servers based on CPUs. progress, and use this as a basis to drive the progress of the entire industry.

Since the future is unpredictable, all chips surrounding the computing industry should be built on the available semiconductor manufacturing fields. Only in this way can it be sustainable. "We do not rule out that the current ability to acquire advanced technology is sustainable, but we must hold on to the bottom line." Xu Zhijun believes that sustainable growth can only be achieved through the prosperity of the ecosystem by unswervingly building a computing ecosystem.

"At present, China's general computing industry has three ecosystems moving forward. One is the X86 ecosystem, which is mainly derived from American technology, the other is our Pentium ecosystem, and the other is the RISC-V ecosystem based on open source. If If it can be built, it is also an ecosystem that can face the future. These three ecosystems may develop in parallel for a long time. In the end, we will see who can support us in the future," Xu Zhijun said.

In the above speech, he also mentioned the Ascend ecosystem, which is a computing ecosystem built by Huawei based on its own AI processors.

Xu Zhijun said that Huawei started building Ascend processors in 2017. Based on this ecosystem, as long as the chips can be produced, it can continue to develop. He believes that whether it is a large model or AI, it must be continuously trained. The earlier it is developed based on a sustainable and future-oriented ecosystem, the higher the investment efficiency will be and the better the future will be.

"There is no way to support the fundamental foundation and sustainable development of the country's computing power, or even to lead. Affected by the semiconductor production process, the computing power of a single chip may not be enough, but based on integrated technology, multiple CPUs, Multiple AI processors are connected to form a cluster, and then the distributed means of cloud computing can meet the country’s computing power needs. In summary, we need to build China’s tertiary industry,” Xu Zhijun said. Services are the main direction of computing infrastructure, and this is one of the solutions.

Finally, Xu Zhijun called in his speech that in addition to the currently popular AI direction, universities should increase their efforts in cultivating talents for key processors, operating systems, and databases, and adopt some policy measures to activate the open source ecosystem.