Some observations and thoughts on participating in CNCC2024

Hello everyone, I am Xiaozaojun.

Today is 1024 Programmers’ Day. First of all, I would like to wish all the programmer fans of Xianzao Classroom a happy holiday!

In fact, I personally think that 1024 should be called ICT Oxen Horse Day rather than Programmers Day. Architects, operation and maintenance engineers and other professions in the IT industry, as well as engineers in the communications industry, are closely related to 1024 and should also share this holiday.

Okay, back to the topic.

Today is the 1024 Festival, and it is also the day when CNCC2024 is held.

The so-called CNCC stands for China National Computer Congress.

This is the highest-level and largest academic event in the field of computer science in China. It is hosted by the China Computer Federation (CCF) and is held around October every year. This year's CNCC will be held in Hengdian, Jinhua, Zhejiang.

Yes, it is the Hengdian where the movie was filmed. This is the first time that CNCC is held in a scenic spot. Previously, it was held in hotels or exhibition centers.

Xiaozaojun has not participated in CNCC for many years. This year, because it is relatively close (it only takes two hours by high-speed rail from Nanjing to Hengdian), I made a special trip to watch it at my own expense.

After a busy day, I would like to report the situation on site to you as soon as possible.

First, the size of the meeting.

According to official data, this conference invited 17 domestic academicians, more than 800 top scholars and corporate technical elites from home and abroad. The number of applicants for the entire conference was about 12,000 this morning, which is basically the same as last year.

Judging from the number of people on site, there were indeed quite a lot of people. It wasn't a huge crowd, but there was a constant stream of people.

The exact location of the meeting was the Yuanming New Garden in Hengdian, which occupied two large gardens, the Summer Garden and the Autumn Garden, and the area was quite large. (You can see the picture later)

Second, the content of the meeting.

The theme of this CNCC is "Developing New Productivity, Computing Leads the Future". The conference includes both the general forum and invited reports, as well as 138 special forums and other activities. The content is very rich and it will last for a total of 3 days.

In addition to the forum, there were also small-scale exhibition booths at the same time, with dozens of companies setting up their exhibitions. You can also see the pictures later for the details.

Third, let me talk about my personal feelings.

I usually attend various exhibitions and forums, but most of them are industry activities. I seldom attend academic activities like CNCC, so the feeling is obviously different.

The most obvious difference is the identity of the participants. At least half of the participants of CNCCC2024 are from universities and teachers. The purpose of attending the conference is to conduct academic exchanges. Of course, there are also many who come to join in the fun. The commercial nature of the conference, including the commercial nature of the content of the forum speeches, is far weaker than that of ordinary industry conferences. Although there are also promotions of their own projects, they are not so "packaged" and " DISS peers".

The content of the conference presentations is very technical, and all the speakers are team leaders from various universities or research institutes. They talk about very deep things. It is difficult for non-professional technicians to understand, so it is recommended not to attend.

Judging from the topics, the entire conference was basically centered around AI, and most of the forums were also strongly related to AI. I mainly attended several forums on computing networks, computing power clusters, high-performance Ethernet, and AI security, all of which were very informative and I gained a lot.

From the experts' speeches, I can clearly feel that the country's technological research in related fields is still very close.

Taking cluster networks as an example, the current AI training scale is developing towards 100,000 cards or even larger, and the network solutions of various companies are still in fierce competition. The larger the cluster size, the higher the failure rate, and the greater the loss caused by interruption. How to solve this problem, everyone is actively researching and proposing technical innovations, which is still very open-minded.

Experts are also quite anxious about AI safety. There are many problems in this area, and the consequences are serious, so more attention needs to be paid. Some expert teams have already made some achievements, which I think are quite useful.

When I have time later, I will write a separate article to share with you.

There are still some unsatisfactory aspects of this conference. Perhaps it is because it is the first time to be held in Yuanming New Garden, and some aspects of on-site organization and supporting services are not comprehensive enough.

For example, the opening ceremony was too early in the morning, and many participants were not used to it (they even called to remind them to get up at 6 o'clock). Another example is that the opening ceremony was held in an open-air theater. The weather was cold and windy, and there was no reminder. Many people were shivering. In addition, the on-site transportation was very unstable and it was difficult to get a taxi. There were many people eating at noon, and the food was not served in time, there were few places for food, the queues were long, and there was no place for eating. The venues for the sub-forums were small, too scattered, the facilities were not complete, and the sign-in method was primitive, etc.

If it is held here again next year, I believe there will be some changes.

Okay, that’s about it.

In general, the popularity of CNCC2024 shows that AI still has a significant impact on the entire computing industry. There are still a large number of seniors and young people active at the forefront of technology research. These seniors are the leaders of technology. These young people are the hope of the future. With everyone's joint efforts, China's AI will surely rank among the best in the world. China's computing will also create a bright future.

Finally, here are some pictures I took on site for your reference!

Venue entrance ( West Gate of Xiayuan, Yuanmingyuan ):

Main venue:

It was freezing cold in the open air. The experts on the rostrum were old and also freezing cold.

Exhibition area:

Temporary Computer Museum (the main building is still under construction and has not yet been completed) :

Some scenic spots and buildings in the scenic area:

Twelve animal heads:

Sub-forums:

That's all, thank you for watching!