Huawei Technologies’ advanced data centre architecture powered by its Ascend chips topped the biennial ranking of the Shenzhen-based company’s latest inventions.
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Initially launched as the CloudMatrix 384, the Scale-Up Ultra-Large-Scale computing system was described by Huawei and Chinese artificial intelligence infrastructure start-up SiliconFlow in a paper as a specialised “AI supernode” that is purpose built for handling extensive AI workloads.
Originally designed with 384 Ascend 910C neural processing units and 192 Kunpeng server central processing units, which are interconnected through a unified bus providing ultra-high bandwidth and low latency, the system can support up to tens of thousands of interconnected chips to train and run AI models, according to Huawei executives at the company’s sixth Innovation and IP Forum in Beijing on Tuesday.
The top invention integrated innovations in hardware, software and architecture, according to Sun Hongwei, Huawei’s chief computing software architect.
Sun said his team tackled plenty of challenges to maintain reliability, power supply and data storage for large computing systems.
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The architecture reflects US-sanctioned Huawei’s efforts to overcome Washington’s tech control measures, as the company pushes the boundaries of AI system performance.
