Huawei's Global Vehicle Cloud
Plus: The industry's first liquid-cooled storage system
Sugon Releases Industry’s First Liquid-Cooled Storage System
The tech company Sugon (中科曙光) recently unveiled their ParaStor liquid-cooled storage system — a product they stated was the first of its kind in the industry. They assert that the ParaStor system achieves a performance boost of 20% compared to traditional fan-based cooling.
The announcement of the ParaStor system came at the 2022 China Data and Storage Summit on November 9. Zhang Xinfeng, deputy general manager of Sugon’s storage division, described the company’s motivation behind this new technology:
As liquid cooling grows more commercialized, users have hoped that liquid cooling technology would expand to include storage systems. The market demand for liquid-cooled storage grows more urgent each day.
Environmental benefits
Liquid-cooled storage technology, whether through Sugon’s ParaStor system or through similar products that may be developed by competitors, holds particular promise for reducing the environmental footprint of data centers. Some more context:
According to Sugon, storage systems are responsible for 30% of data centers’ total energy consumption, second only to servers.
By using the ParaStor storage system in conjunction with Sugon’s liquid-cooled servers (a strategy they refer to as “a single storage/computing stack”), the company believes that data centers can reduce their PUE ratings (power usage effectiveness) to an impressive 1.1 or lower.
A comprehensive set of energy standards for China’s data centers was implemented at the beginning of this month. These regulations set strict requirements for energy efficiency at newly constructed or expanded data centers. Significantly, these data centers may not exceed a PUE of 1.50.
Sources
SAC: 数据中心能效限定值及能效等级
Sugon WeChat account: 业界首款液冷存储发布，曙光打造“存算一栈式”液冷方案
Huawei Cloud’s Automotive Ambitions
Last week, Huawei Cloud made multiple announcements at an automotive summit it cohosted with the China Machinery Industry Information Institute. Below are some of the highlights:
An ambitious design for a global automotive cloud infrastructure.
A multi-pronged plan for improving the digitalization and smart capabilities of automobiles.
A proposal for building an open ecosystem for innovation in autonomous vehicles, including the development of end-to-end research solutions. This plan involves coordination and collaboration with multiple companies involved in the automotive industry, including BYD and Great Wall Motor.
A global automotive cloud
Huawei Cloud frames this global cloud as part of its goal to upgrade the smart capabilities of modern vehicles. It referred to the cloud as “1 + 3 + M + N.” While the name may not quite roll off the tongue, it works as a summary of the plan:
1 global automotive network for storage and computing: Currently, Huawei’s global cloud network KooVerse services all 29 geographical regions and 75 usable areas that this network aims to cover. This network is intended to be a KooVerse for vehicles.
3 hyper-sized core cloud hubs: These hubs will all be located in China: Ulaanchab in Inner Mongolia, Gui’an in Fujian, and Wuhu in Anhui.
M distributed IoV (internet of vehicles) nodes: To support the quick movement of IoV data to the cloud, a currently undetermined number of nodes will be installed in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. These IoV nodes will be built with the cooperation of telecommunications carriers such as China Unicom.
N dedicated vehicle data access points: Over 50 dedicated access points for vehicle data will be installed across China to ensure a 24/7 flow of autonomous vehicle research data to the cloud.
Notably, the infrastructure for calculating and collecting vehicular data, which is at the heart of this cloud project, is located in China. These aspects of the cloud’s infrastructure are also intended to support many of Huawei concurrent initiatives, such as improving vehicles’ smart capabilities and supporting collaborative research into autonomous vehicles.
Smarter, more digitalized vehicles
Huawei Cloud described a multi-pronged plan for improving the level of intelligence and digitalization for vehicles, automotive companies, and the industrial chain.
Some of the elements of their plan are as follows:
10 “industry chain empowerment bases,” to provide support to Huawei’s partners along the industry value chain'
Software-defined vehicle solutions, including next-gen vehicular applications, a developer platform that leverages edge computing, and a distributed cloud native business framework
Solution-based platforms that provide digitalization services for automotive companies, such as digitalization consultation, software development, and technical services.
The “1 + 3 + M + N” cloud is also described as a key component of this larger plan.
Boosting research into autonomous vehicles
Huawei Cloud also proposed an end-to-end solution for autonomous vehicles research, which it stated would support a closed loop for data in the autonomous vehicle industry. These solutions, developed with partners in the industry, were aimed at automotive companies as well as businesses working on algorithms for autonomous vehicles. The 50+ dedicated access points for vehicle data included in Huawei’s automotive cloud infrastructure are also intended to contribute to this.
These efforts are described as contributing toward an industry-wide development platform for autonomous vehicles, which will handle end-to-end aspects such as data collection, storage, and labeling; model training and deployment; simulation; and evaluation.
Overall, the announcements represent a commitment from Huawei’s cloud division to boosting and supporting China’s automotive industry’s efforts toward data- and AI-driven growth, as well as encouraging industry-wide collaboration on the R&D of autonomous vehicles.
Source
Huawei Cloud WeChat account: 1+3+M+N，华为云全球汽车产业云基础设施布局正式发布！
