ARM is unique in the mobile terminal, but it is difficult to build an ecosystem in the server field. Although Qualcomm, Nvidia, Samsung and other large manufacturers have tried to build an ARM ecosystem for many years, the results are almost negligible. In addition to technical and performance factors, cost and ecological tests are more important. Dai Kun, chief analyst of Forrester Research, once told reporters that for new entrants in this field, there are many obstacles to achieving scale benefits.
"The server chip market needs long-term technology investment and extensive support from the software and hardware ecosystem. ” However, Huawei has plunged into this "bottomless hole" and spent 20 billion yuan in ten years to make Kunpeng chips and chipsets. "Kunpeng Ecology is to create a real open source platform around the future computing industry, so as to achieve real autonomy, controllability, safety and reliability. ”Lu Yong, president of Huawei in China, said in a recent interview with China Business News, "If this road is not followed, sooner or later someone will kick Huawei off the top of Mount Everest. ”
For Huawei, the path of building an ecosystem is undoubtedly the most difficult one, but if it does not, the future of 5G, AI, and cloud computing will become unmanageable.
New Jianghu of Heterogeneous Computing Computing power and algorithm are two wedges inserted into the intelligent world. The chip bears the strength of computing power. The Kunpeng 920, as a server, is regarded as Huawei's "nuclear weapon" to open the server market. The cooperation between Huawei and ARM has lasted for many years. In 2013, Huawei announced that the first Hi1612 in 2014 was an ARM64 bit CPU. In 2016, Hi1616 was the first ARM processor to support multiplexing. In 2019, Hi1620 was introduced. Kunpeng 920 was the official brand and model of the Hi1620 series. At the press conference on January 7 this year, Huawei executives did not hesitate to place the evaluation of "the highest performance in the industry" on this new product based on ARM architecture. Huawei said that the Kunpeng 920 can reach 2.6GHz, and a single chip can support 64 cores. The chip integrates 8-channel DDR4, and its memory bandwidth exceeds the mainstream of the industry by 46%. At the same time, Huawei also launched three TaiShan series servers, Tai Shan 22080 for balance servers, Taishan 5280/5290 for storage servers, and Tai Shan X6000 for high-density server markets. What is a server? It is a high-performance computer. As a node of the network, it stores and processes 80% of the data and information on the network, so it is also called the soul of the network. In the field of server chips, Intel Undoubtedly, it is an "all-around champion" with almost no rivals. According to IDC, X86 occupies nearly 98% of the global server chip market. In the research report of the organization, Taishan's launch is regarded as a direct solution to the core CPU autonomy problem. "Huawei never intended to become a chip company, but only to provide customers with better value, high performance, low cost, and open innovation. ”Huawei chip and hardware strategy Fellow Ai Wei told reporters at the press conference at that time. Another executive added that Kunpeng chips are not sold to the outside world, but only used for Huawei's own servers and clouds. It will also maintain strategic cooperation with Intel for a long time. "Huawei does not want to compete with Intel, let alone replace it. ”He said, "The layout of chips is mainly to see the era of computing pluralism brought about by data diversification. ” Huawei believes that the computing industry, originally driven by Moore's Law, is unable to sustain the explosive demand for computing. AI has brought four multiple challenges to the computing industry. With the gradual development of ARM ecology, more and more applications have migrated to ARM architecture. For diversified computing tasks, it is more important to find a suitable architecture. about mobile phone Generally applicable ARM chips, when developers develop game applications in the cloud, the ARM architecture obviously has its own advantages. But an inevitable topic is the replacement of server chips. In the server chip market, Intel is still the home of the X86 architecture, and Intel does not grant external licenses. When talking about the server ecology, Xu Wenwei, Huawei's director and president of the Strategic Research Institute, once said that the growth of data volume will reach 18 times from 2018 to 2025, and the ARM industry will usher in new development opportunities. Intel will also maintain a long-term partnership with Huawei, while Kunpeng 920 and TaiShan servers are mainly used in big data, distributed storage, ARM native applications and other scenarios. "In the intelligent world, the road is blocked and long. Today, we need theoretical breakthroughs and the invention of new basic technologies. We will continue to explore the unknown new world and bravely sail into areas that have never been visited by previous people. ”Xu Wenwei said at Huawei's Asia Pacific Innovation Day. Xu Wenwei told China Business News that the future of computing is heterogeneous computing, including X86 and ARM. The application of Kunpeng needs to establish an ecosystem and industrial support, which is why Huawei has recently launched several Kunpeng ecological bases. It can be seen that in recent months, Kunpeng Ecology has begun to appear frequently in cloud business activities carried out by local governments, and has become the "favorite" of local governments as an "ecological innovation center". Relevant Kunpeng concept stocks are also popular with capital. In a research report, CSCI pointed out that Huawei plans to invest 3 billion yuan in the next five years to develop Kunpeng's industrial ecology. At present, Huawei has built an online Kunpeng community, providing acceleration libraries, compilers, tool chains, open source operating systems, etc. Among them, the community covers software ecology, product services, solutions, application markets, cooperation plans, Kunpeng Forum, learning certification, Kunpeng Laboratory and other parts. The ecosystem is convenient. Based on Kunpeng series chips, Huawei provides TaiShan servers and Kunpeng Cloud service And build a software ecosystem around Kunpeng related products and services to empower partners and developers. In the OS field, Huawei and the leading OS system manufacturers in the industry have completed the compatibility test and provided the self-developed Euler OS operating system. At the tool chain level, Huawei provides a complete code migration, optimization acceleration, compilation tool&operation environment. At the same time, Huawei, together with major open source communities, has realized the support of common basic software and middleware for Kunpeng, facilitating developers to do application development and application migration. "Huawei has achieved full stack independent innovation from bottom chip, hardware to software, and its localization in key areas is expected to accelerate. ”CSC said. Soochow Securities believes that Kunpeng ecology will accelerate the localization. At present, Huawei Cloud Kunpeng Cloud Service has been applied in Cocos, Inner Mongolia Ecological and Agricultural Meteorology Center, Jiuze Technology, Jieshun and other industry customers, and 25 partners, including UFIDA, China Software International, Softcom Smart, and SAP, have joined the "Kunpeng Cloud Partnership Plan". At the same time, Huawei's investment in Kunpeng will also drive the implementation of domestic systems in the industry. The five leading companies, namely China Software, Taiji, Westcom, China Great Wall and UFIDA, are preferred. In addition, the focus of the market was limited to the basic software and hardware fields before, and the supporting network security and application layer paid less attention. These fields will also be included when they are officially rolled out. Ecological construction is not easy. This is especially true in the server field. Performance is no longer the decisive factor. Some insiders pointed out that the first is the hardware ecology. The huge shipments of Intel Xeon series are very easy to control costs. Even though the 7nm advanced manufacturing process has not been launched yet, customers who want to replace other chips need to bear huge platform hardware costs. The second is software ecology, namely software development, optimization and compatibility. "It is particularly difficult to calculate the ecology of diversity. ”Mu Fei, chief analyst of Forrester, told reporters that ecology requires joint efforts of technology and business, and requires great investment. Mu Fei told reporters that Huawei's increased investment in the ARM computing ecosystem is a contribution to diversified computing, and he hopes to see more business scenarios in the future. However, it should also be noted that with the change of demand for cloud computing and more application scenarios, the development of server chips is also showing a diversified development trend. Multiple data types and scenarios drive the optimization of computing architecture. The combination of multiple computing architectures is an inevitable choice to achieve optimal performance computing. However, the establishment of an ecosystem requires the consensus and promotion of industry chain partners, which cannot be completed overnight. Whether for the industry or Huawei, this is a long run that lasts for years or even decades.
