Huawei Powering Digital Era Forward for Data Centres

The Global Data Center Facility Summit 2024 saw more than 600 industry leaders descend on Singapore to discuss new trends and opportunities of the global data centre industry in the intelligent computing era.

Attendees also got to experience all-scenario, all-ecosystem, and all-service end-to-end (E2E) solutions, and share innovative practices of green data centres in the Asia Pacific and Europe. By fully embracing the intelligent computing era, Huawei strives to power the digital era forward.

At the opening speech, Charles Yang, Senior Vice President of Huawei and President of Global Marketing, Sales and Services, Huawei Digital Power, said that since ChatGPT ushered in the AI era, large models keep pushing the limits of computing power and the intelligent computing industry is witnessing an unprecedented construction boom. 

As predicted, 100GW will be added to the global data centre installed capacity in the next five years and the market value will exceed US$600 billion.

With those opportunities come challenges, and the primary challenge concerning the data centre industry is reliability and electricity, according to Charles.

Reliability is the prerequisite for everything. In the intelligent computing era, data centres are scaling up from the MW-level, to the 100 MW-level, and on to the GW-level, and the impact scope of faults is proliferating from thousands to millions of users. 

E2E reliability of data centres is becoming even more important than ever. On top of that, the surge in energy consumption is a great concern. From GPT-3 to GPT-4, the energy consumption of a training session increases from 11 million kWh to 110 million kWh, and the number is expected to only grow in future. 

In response to the opportunities brought by AI, Huawei – by making continuous innovations and solid investments to build new energy infrastructure for power systems, EVs, and digital industries – will work with customers and partners to expand the industry space, as part of its efforts to embrace the intelligent computing era.

Steering Data Centres to the AI Era

During the summit, Sun Xiaofeng, President of Huawei Data Centre Facility & Critical Power Business, delivered a keynote speech titled ‘Power the Digital Era Forward’.

In that speech, he stated that as AI large models are penetrating more and more industries, surging compute demands are driving the growth in data centre scale and quantity.

To address the challenges facing data centres, Huawei strives to build product and service and ecosystem E2E data centre solutions that feature fast deployment, flexible cooling, green energy, and ultimate reliability for creating a win-win future of intelligent computing.

• Fast deployment: Data centres are fully modularised and prefabricated to ensure high quality and efficient construction. At the device layer, the modular design enables flexible capacity expansion. At the system layer, the decoupled architecture helps realise one power system per container. The system is pre-commissioned in the factory to facilitate high quality and fast delivery. At the data centre layer, the time to market (TTM) is reduced by 50% through modularisation, prefabrication, and productisation.
• Flexible cooling: Air-liquid fusion and integrated cooling source emerges as the optimal cooling architecture for intelligent computing. High-density racks drive the liquid cooling application. The air-to-liquid ratio is adjustable to build a simplified and reliable cooling solution that adapts to the different cooling requirements of servers.
• Green energy: New generation-grid-load-storage integrated solution is built to ensure the sound operations of intelligent computing centres. As power shortage curtails the development of the data centre industry, Huawei Smart PV+ESS and Grid Forming solutions increase grid integration of renewables by 40%, significantly reducing the energy costs of intelligent computing centres by generating more green computing power with less green energy.
• Ultimate reliability: Data centres are safeguarded through reliable products and preventive protection. The full-chain reliability concept is implemented throughout product design, test and certification, and manufacturing to ensure product reliability. The preventive protection ensures the reliability of key components and power supply links, and prevents short circuits in cells.

Huawei's global service network covers more than 170 countries with over 1,800 professional engineers. With N+ flagship service centres, Huawei has built a one-hour service radius for its customers.

The ecosystem is a key part for a win-win future of intelligent computing. By leveraging each other's advantages, Huawei works with partners to develop comprehensive E2E solutions and provide customers with one-stop data centre consulting, design, integrated development, and delivery services.

Building Data Centres in ASEAN

During the summit, Huawei and the ASEAN Centre for Energy released a white paper on ‘Building Next Generation Data Center Facility in ASEAN’. 

The document provides insights into the status quo, challenges, and trends of data centres in the ASEAN region, and emphasises that efficient and energy-saving products and solutions should be applied in data centre design, development, and O&M. It also proposes future-oriented policy recommendations for mature and emerging data centre markets, contributing to the sustainable development of the ASEAN industry.

In the ecosystem exhibition area, Huawei showcased scenario-based solutions for large-, medium-, and small-sized data centres, and demonstrated data centre consulting, design, integrated development, and delivery capabilities with dozens of ecosystem partners including CIMC, Weichai, CSCEC, and Huashi.

By delving into the industry, aggregating partner ecosystems, and making innovations applicable to transformations, Huawei will continue to help customers build reliable computing infrastructure, accelerating the industry to embrace AI and powering the digital era forward.

******

Make sure you check out the latest edition of AI Magazine and also sign up to our global conference series - Tech & AI LIVE 2024

******

AI Magazine is a BizClik brand