HNS 2023 | Huawei DCN Software and Hardware Strengths Comprehensively Upgraded, Powering the Intelligent Era

[Munich, Germany, October 26, 2023] During Huawei Network Summit (HNS) 2023, the session themed "Huawei Super-Connectivity 400GE CloudFabric, Powering the Intelligent Era" was the focus of much attention, with more than 100 customers and partners from multiple countries and regions — such as Germany, France, Italy, and Spain — gathering to discuss the future development trends and technological innovations of data center networks (DCNs). At the session, Huawei launched the comprehensively upgraded DCN solution — Super-Connectivity 400GE CloudFabric. Standing out with ultra-powerful performance, ultra-fast deployment, and ultra-intelligent operations, the solution helps to power the intelligent era. On top of that, Huawei released a host of CloudEngine series data center (DC) switches for the Europe region, leading the DCN domain with a series of key upgrades.

Arthur Wang, President of Data Center Network Domain, Huawei Data Communication Product Line, delivered a keynote speech entitled Huawei Super-Connectivity 400GE CloudFabric, Powering the Intelligent Era. He said, "To address the new challenges in the cloud and AI era, Huawei upgraded CloudFabric to build super-connectivity 400GE DCNs. The new CloudEngine XH16800 DC switch can help improve AI training efficiency by 20%. Based on an open architecture with a digital map, the solution enables unified orchestration and intelligent O&M across multiple clouds, provisioning services and locating faults in just several minutes."

Arthur Wang, President of Data Center Network Domain, Huawei Data Communication Product Line, delivering a keynote speech

Super-Connectivity 400GE CloudFabric, Powering the Intelligent Era

As ChatGPT leads to an explosion in foundation models, global interest in intelligent computing construction has never been higher. AI is penetrating a wider range of industries at a faster pace, further driving the rapid growth of intelligent computing in DCs. On top of that, as the cloud-based architectures of DCs continue to upgrade, the general-purpose computing power used for various types of services, such as website and video, is evolving towards multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud. DCs have entered a new era of joint construction and maintenance of intelligent computing and general-purpose computing infrastructure. This poses three challenges to DCNs: how to ensure connectivity performance, deployment efficiency, and operational efficiency.
To address these challenges, Huawei launches the Super-Connectivity 400GE CloudFabric Solution. This future-oriented solution has three highlights:

• Ultra-powerful performance: The solution is built on Huawei CloudEngine series DC switches that offer high-density 400GE and 800GE ports and is ideal for building a cluster with 10k GPUs/NPUs in the intelligent computing scenario, four times higher than the industry average. Powered by the exclusive network scale load balancing (NSLB) algorithm, the solution improves the network throughput to 98% and accelerating AI training by 20%. Furthermore, the solution supports flexible multi-GE access in general-purpose computing scenarios and smooth evolution to 10G, 25G, and 100G, reducing the total cost of operation (TCO) by 50%.
• Ultra-fast deployment: Based on the AOC — an open programmability platform — the solution enables cross-cloud and cross-vendor network deployment from end to end, as well as cross-cloud service rollout within minutes.
• Ultra-intelligent operations: Huawei's exclusive network digital map provides the FinOps capability to implement bill-based analysis of service resources, improving the return on investment (ROI) by 12%. In addition, Huawei's heat map helps operators optimize resource allocation for 16% higher resource utilization.

Christophe Batiard, Deputy Director of Enterprise Networks at Huawei's European Region; Alberto Bayo, Huawei Spain CTO; and Jesús Villagrasa, CTO of Costaisa attended this session and delivered keynote speeches.

Launching a Host of Star DCN Products, Leading the DCN Domain with a Series of Key Upgrades

At the session, Huawei launched a host of star DCN products for different scenarios, leading the DCN domain with a series of key upgrades.

• General-purpose computing scenario: Huawei launches DC switches with flexible cards and provides multi-GE CloudEngine 8865 cards ranging from GE to 400GE to implement smooth three-generation evolution of servers. Huawei also launches the low-latency DC switch CloudEngine 6885-LL for the securities scenario, which reduces the L3 forwarding latency to 350 ns and significantly improves the transaction efficiency of core systems.
• Storage network scenario: Huawei launches the intelligent lossless DC switches — CloudEngine 6885-SAN, CloudEngine 8850-SAN, and CloudEngine 8865-SAN. These sophisticated switches improve storage input/output operations per second (IOPS) by more than 90% and inter-DC data synchronization efficiency by 60%.
• Intelligent computing scenario: Huawei launches super-connectivity AI computing switches — such as CloudEngine XH16800, CloudEngine XH8100, and CloudEngine XH8200. Underpinned by intelligent lossless networks, these state-of-the-art switches deliver high network throughput on the basis of, thereby upgrading the effective bandwidth in the AI training scenario and improving AI training efficiency by 20%.

Huawei's Super-Connectivity 400GE CloudFabric Solution is ideal for building a large-scale, high-throughput, and high-reliability DCN, and has witnessed wide application in industries such as finance, government, education, transportation, and manufacturing, accelerating digital transformation in many industries. Looking ahead, Huawei will continue to cooperate with industry partners and double down on innovation of software and hardware capabilities to unleash high computing power for a wide range of industries and create a better intelligent world.