(China Focus Face to Face) China is competing for artificial intelligence, which key technologies are monopolized by foreign countries? How to break?
China News Service, Beijing, September 27th, title: China is competing for artificial intelligence, which key technologies are monopolized by foreign countries?
How to break?
——Interview with Zheng Weimin, Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering and Professor of Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University
China News Agency reporter Zhang Xu
At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution is deeply evolving, and the digital age is coming, and major countries around the world are competing fiercely in the field of digital economy.
Key digital technology innovation, what advantages has China achieved?
In the current international environment, what problems do you face?
As a strategic technology leading the future, artificial intelligence is an important computing power infrastructure for China to improve its economic and technological level and enhance its international competitiveness. At present, there is an upsurge in the construction of artificial intelligence computing centers everywhere.
How can the artificial intelligence computing center maximize its value?
What is the level of technological autonomy and controllability of the China Artificial Intelligence Computing Center?
Which key technologies are monopolized by foreign countries?
Recently, Zheng Weimin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University, accepted an exclusive interview with China News Agency "Focus on China" to give an authoritative interpretation.
China News Agency "China Focus Face to Face" interviewed Zheng Weimin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor of the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Jiang Qiming
Excerpts from the interview are as follows:
Give three sentences, it can write 50 episodes of a series
Reporter from China News Service: Recently, the topic of China’s "explosive orders for artificial intelligence computing centers" has attracted a lot of attention. Wuhan's first artificial intelligence computing center was built at the end of May. It was full every day and was running at full capacity as soon as it opened. At present, appointments have been scheduled for half a year. What is an artificial intelligence (AI) computing center? Why is the market demand so strong?
Zheng Weimin:
Artificial intelligence has a variety of application scenarios, and the demand is very high.
According to the scene, it can be divided into three types of applications:
1. Image detection and video retrieval.
It can be used in security, medical diagnosis, and autonomous driving.
The core is the convolutional network. This type of application has been implemented very well and has played a very good role.
2. Decision making.
For example, transportation planning, etc., this type has also played a very good effect, and the core is reinforcement learning.
3. Natural language processing.
For example, search and recommendation, intelligent man-machine interface, the core is Transformer.
In terms of application, language translation, Chinese into English, English into Japanese, etc., can answer any question. Such a machine needs to be very large.
Another example is to generate a text summary. You can write a 50-episode TV series for you in three sentences.
These three types of applications have a lot of demand, so they will queue up to six months later.
China News Agency reporter: What is the difference between the current popular artificial intelligence computing center and the traditional data center? A few days ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Three-year Action Plan for the Development of New Data Centers (2021-2023)". Are the new data centers and artificial intelligence computing centers defined in the "Action Plan" the same thing?
Zheng Weimin: The
traditional data center is mainly composed of server clusters with general CPU architecture.
In recent years, with the development of artificial intelligence, data centers have gradually included many machines with high-performance artificial intelligence computing power (GPUs or artificial intelligence accelerators).
And what is the artificial intelligence computing center?
It is mainly composed of machines with high-performance artificial intelligence computing power (GPU or artificial intelligence accelerator).
Therefore, it can be said that the coverage of the data center concept will be greater, including artificial intelligence computing power.
On September 3, 2021, the 2021 China International Trade in Services Fair will be held in Beijing. In the exhibition area of the National Convention Center, Huawei's artificial intelligence computing center Atlas 900 PoD equipment will be exhibited.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Hou Yu
Is China's technology independent and controllable?
China News Agency reporter: Artificial intelligence and big data centers are both "new infrastructure." At present, major countries in the world are building artificial intelligence and big data infrastructure on a large scale. Some people say that artificial intelligence computing power will be like water and electricity in the future. What do you think about becoming a public basic resource? What are the core advantages of China's artificial intelligence infrastructure? What is the level of technological autonomy and controllability of the China Artificial Intelligence Computing Center? Which key technologies are monopolized by foreign countries?
Zheng Weimin:
From the rapid development of the global public cloud market, it can be seen that both general-purpose computing power and artificial intelligence computing power are public infrastructures and are an important trend. In the past, general-purpose computing power was infrastructure. As an infrastructure, it is being recognized by more and more users.
However, we must also note that computing power as an infrastructure requires relevant data as the basis. Machines, including ordinary machines, including artificial intelligence machines, are placed on the cloud. Data privacy and confidentiality in many industries are very important. There are still big restrictions on cloud access, and how to put data on the cloud is a problem worth considering.
China's main advantage in building artificial intelligence infrastructure is that it has more government-led investment.
However, in market-oriented construction and operation, the overall artificial intelligence computing power basic software and hardware technical level and independent controllability, there is still a certain gap with the United States, for example, the programming framework is currently dominated by TensorFlow and Pytorch.
In terms of intelligent computing chips, Huawei Shengteng and Cambrian have made good progress in the artificial intelligence computing power architecture, but they are subject to advanced chip manufacturing processes, or there is still a significant gap with Nvidia products in the software ecological environment, and it still needs to be as soon as possible develop.
China News Agency "China Focus Face to Face" interviewed Zheng Weimin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor of the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University.
Photo by Zhai Lu from China News Service
Reporter from China News Service: In addition to the topic of "Orders for the Artificial Intelligence Computing Center", the large scientific device "Pengcheng Cloud Brain II" of the Pengcheng Laboratory has recently won many international awards and has also attracted the attention of the industry. As "new infrastructure", what kind of strong support can they provide for scientific research and innovation projects? What is the value in enabling industry applications?
Zheng Weimin:
In terms of scientific research and innovation, a very important trend is HPC (High Performance Computing) + AI (Artificial Intelligence), which combines traditional high-performance computing applications based on simulation methods with AI models.
Solve problems that could not be solved in the past, or accelerate problems that took a long time in the past by thousands of times.
In this regard, AlphaFold (DeepMind artificial intelligence system) gives a very good example of using artificial intelligence methods to assist in protein structure prediction, which solves the problem that cannot be solved by the use of pure scientific calculation simulation methods in the past due to excessive calculation.
The combination of HPC and AI is a very obvious advantage of our innovation.
In terms of enabling industries, Pengcheng Lab can provide powerful artificial intelligence computing power for smart cities, carrying functions such as smart transportation and smart public health in smart city applications. Pengcheng Cloud Brain II is also developing the "Belt and Road" language The automatic translation of "One Belt One Road" (the initiative) provides important support.
In terms of large models, major progress has been made in natural language processing effects, but specific application areas are still being explored.
China News Agency "China Focus Face to Face" interviewed Zheng Weimin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor of the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Jiang Qiming
Reporter from China News Service: All walks of life believe that relying on artificial intelligence to achieve intelligent transformation is a required course, but at present, the main body of China’s industry has problems such as scattered development focus. From this perspective, whether the government is planning to build large-scale artificial intelligence infrastructure A better path to solve the enterprise transformation? What are the unique advantages of large-scale and intensive infrastructure?
Zheng Weimin:
At present, local governments are very active in building artificial intelligence infrastructure. It should be said that it can play a very good role in promoting artificial intelligence in local industries.
But it should also be noted that it is necessary to analyze the path and rhythm of local industrial artificial intelligence in accordance with local conditions.
Large-scale and intensive infrastructure mainly plays a key role in completing the training of ultra-large-scale models.
At present, large models are indeed an important development trend, but whether the scale of artificial intelligence algorithms is limited is still an open question.
Why is there a wave of artificial intelligence computing center construction everywhere?
Reporter from China News Service: There is currently an upsurge in the construction of artificial intelligence computing centers in China. There are more than 20 cities planning to build artificial intelligence computing centers. What is the current operation and implementation of China's artificial intelligence computing centers?
Zheng Weimin:
Judging from the experience of Wuhan and Pengcheng Yunnao, the current artificial intelligence computing center is still running very well. There are many users who need machine time, and it takes a long time to queue to use the machine. This also reflects the domestic situation. Users have strong demand for artificial intelligence computing power.
So I think that building an artificial intelligence computing center to empower local enterprises, research institutes, universities, etc. will play a big role.
On July 29, 2021, the 2020-2021 school year "Juvenile Silicon Valley-National Youth Artificial Intelligence Education Achievement Exhibition Competition" sponsored by the China Next Generation Education Foundation was held in Wuyuan County, Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province in "China's Most Beautiful Village".
Photo by Liu Zhankun
Reporter from China News Service: As a huge infrastructure with extremely aggregated resources from all parties, the operation of the artificial intelligence computing center after the construction is also a major proposition. Do you have any suggestions on this? How to operate scientifically to maximize the value of artificial intelligence computing centers everywhere? What are the operational evaluation dimensions of the artificial intelligence computing center?
Zheng Weimin:
I think we must pay special attention to data governance.
The computing power is provided, how should the data be provided?
With the promulgation of the "Personal Information Protection Law", many compliance requirements have been added to the use of data. As an artificial intelligence computing center led by local governments, in addition to computing power, can it provide relevant data of important value?
How to not only comply with the "Personal Information Protection Law", but also enable intelligent algorithms to obtain the required data is a major issue in the operation of the artificial intelligence computing center.
There is also the need to pay attention to financial sustainability in operations, and must be charged for operation.
Avoid users from using a large amount of resources free of charge. It seems that the utilization rate is high, but it may be worthless.
Users with special needs for empowerment support can be supported by issuing machine-time coupons.
In this regard, many supercomputing centers in the past, such as Guangzhou Supercomputing and Wuxi Supercomputing, already have very mature systems that can be borrowed.
The operation evaluation of the artificial intelligence computing center can include utilization, return on investment, power consumption, and application effects.
Among them, the utilization rate I want to say a little bit more, not 100% utilization rate is the best, because the higher the utilization rate, the longer the job queue time, so generally speaking, the utilization rate of about 60%-70% is A very good balance, there is no need to pursue a utilization rate close to 100%.
China News Agency reporter: In combination with the digital economy and industrial development trends, what do you think is the future development direction of the artificial intelligence computing center? Will it quickly turn into a cold period after a period of construction broke out?
Zheng Weimin:
The combination of artificial intelligence and industry has just begun. I am still confident in the application and expansion of artificial intelligence in all walks of life. I think there is still a lot of room for development of artificial intelligence computing centers.
Innovation in our scientific research, empowerment of enterprises, and improvement of people's lives will be of great benefit.
China News Agency "China Focus Face to Face" interviewed Zheng Weimin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor of the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University.
Photo by Zhai Lu from China News Service
China has the ability to "advance from scratch"
China News Agency reporter: China’s "14th Five-Year Plan" and the 2035 long-term goal outline proposed to strengthen the innovative application of key digital technologies, and accelerate the advancement of basic theories, basic algorithms and other research and development breakthroughs and iterative applications. Key digital technology innovation, what advantages has China achieved? In the current international environment, what problems do you face? Which ones are closely related to the artificial intelligence computing center? What is the expected future development trend?
Zheng Weimin:
It is difficult for China to talk about advantages in basic theories and algorithms, but it can basically follow the first echelon, which is the algorithms and theories put forward by the Americans. We will soon be able to keep up and improve and apply.
In the entire digital technology, in addition to the hardware chip manufacturing industry chain, I want to particularly emphasize that China still has a lot of lessons to be supplemented in the direction of basic software.
We are now a large number of software, including operating systems, databases, compilers, artificial intelligence programming frameworks, etc., not built from scratch, but modified on the basis of open source.
It should be said that being able to make a large number of modifications on the basis of open source software has proven that we have made great progress, which is of great significance to the autonomy of my country's digital technology.
But if we put forward higher demands on ourselves, we must have the ability to build advanced basic software independently from scratch.
The "advanced" here means that the new software we build has a generational advantage over the existing software in terms of performance and functionality.
In this regard, in the industry, Huawei's Hongmeng operating system and artificial intelligence programming framework MindSpore have given good examples.
In our academic circles, Tsinghua University’s time series database, graph computing system, and storage system have also made certain progress. We expect domestic industries and universities to pay more attention to building advanced basic software from scratch to provide digital industries in China and the world. More revolutionary basic system software.
Therefore, I especially emphasize the four words "from scratch", "from scratch" means we do it from scratch, and "advanced" means 10 times and 20 times better than the existing software. We have this ability and hope to improve us through this method. The status quo of the national IT industry.
(over)