2018 Edge Computing Industry Alliance starts a new journey! Huawei promotes technological innovation and accelerates commercial implementation

[51CTO.com original article] Recently, the 2018 Edge Computing Industry Summit with the theme of "Edge Intelligence, Edge-Cloud Collaboration" was successfully concluded in Beijing. The summit was hosted by the Edge Computing Industry Alliance (ECC), with a main forum and two sub-forums on edge intelligence and edge-cloud collaboration. There were more than 10 keynote speeches and more than 20 technical sharing sessions on site, covering popular technologies such as TSN, artificial intelligence, SDX, big data, blockchain and 5G, attracting more than 600 people from domestic and foreign government officials, association leaders, industry experts, and industry ecosystem partners to attend the meeting. Liu Shaowei, president of the network R&D department of Huawei, an important member of the ECC Alliance, delivered a wonderful speech on site as vice chairman of the Edge Computing Industry Alliance.

Promoting commercial applications and technology advancement through test beds

Liu Shaowei first shared with the audience the progress of the alliance's work in the past year. He revealed that in 2018, more than 40 companies and research institutions joined the Edge Computing Industry Alliance, and now the alliance has more than 200 members, of which ICT industry members and OT manufacturing companies account for the largest proportion.

From last year to this year, the Edge Computing Industry Alliance has released more than 30 test beds in four industries, and added 9 test beds including edge intelligence, edge cloud collaboration, and edge security innovation. Liu Shaowei introduced that more than 10 of the test beds have been commercially used on a large scale. For example, more than 100,000 elevators have been deployed for networking. In addition, there are also many commercial test beds for edge security. Liu Shaowei told reporters that the test bed requires the cooperation of many ecological partners to continuously advance the technology through the test bed and continuously add new technologies in the process of promoting commercial applications.

"The OPC UA over TSN test bed developed this year was also awarded the World Top Ten Technology Progress Award for Intelligent Manufacturing". Liu Shaowei said that in March this year, the OPC UA over TSN test bed was demonstrated at the Hannover Telecom Show in Germany, and the many excellent performances of the test bed caused heated discussions in the industry at that time. "TSN can achieve determinism, full connectivity, and multi-system interaction or collaboration. It is an open and dockable system. The chips used in the test bed use software-defined network management, including low-latency lightweight protocols and low latency, low jitter, nanometer-level jitter, etc. There are also some algorithms that use synchronization, which are all centrally displayed and developed in the test bed."

In the past two years, Liu Shaowei has emphasized on many occasions that edge computing and cloud computing are not substitutes, but should be mutually coordinated. He said that in 2019, the ECC Alliance will have two to three edge-cloud collaborative test bed development plans, hoping to develop and implement them through it. In addition, the ECC Alliance is likely to consider using Akraino as an open source community, or use this open source project to promote the development of the edge computing industry. Alliance members will contribute some research and development results to the community, such as operating systems running on edge computing gateways or devices, cloud-based OpenStack-related content, test bed OPC UA full-stack applications and verification, etc.

Multiple engines promote the implementation of edge computing industry

The reporter learned that in 2018, the Edge Computing Industry Alliance also did a lot of work in academic exchanges, technological innovation, industrial cooperation and international industry promotion.

In terms of academic exchanges, many academic institutions have participated in ECC Alliance activities, such as the 3rd SEC Summit, the 2nd Edge Computing Technology Seminar, etc. The ECC Alliance has also established joint laboratories with universities.

In terms of technological innovation, the ECC Alliance has also reaped great rewards: in the field of edge cloud services, Huawei has innovatively developed Huawei Cloud and Edge Collaboration Solutions, Intel has developed visual processing acceleration chips, and Shen Zi Institute's material source platform, and the industry has worked together to promote and use some basic platform and chip technologies. At the same time, there are a lot of innovative cooperation, including cooperation and innovation of customer technologies such as ARM and Zhenhua Heavy Industries.

In terms of industrial cooperation, AII and ECC Alliance cooperate closely, with routine communication and meeting mechanisms. Currently, there are three special projects in the industry, including jointly building an OPC UA over TSN test bed, jointly publishing a white paper on edge computing and cloud computing collaboration, a white paper on reference architecture 3.0, and related research in the field of operator edge computing. This year, China Mobile joined ECC as a standing director unit, officially marking the extension of the ECC industry ecosystem from enterprises and IoT, industrial Internet applications to the operator field.

In terms of the development of edge computing in Europe, the ECC Alliance held a forum on edge computing in Europe and also began to cooperate with some German institutions or companies. The key areas of cooperation are still based on OPC UA over TSN technology. "Our goal is to promote industry consensus and let everyone identify common goals so that it can be applied in various industries."

Outlook for 2019

When talking about the main work of the ECC Alliance in 2019, Liu Shaowei said that what is more important in 2019 is the process from technology, innovation to practice, and the test bed of OPC UA over TSN3.0. "We will continue to advance generation by generation, allowing more equipment or equipment from different industries to join in the operation, constantly advancing technology, and also promoting applications in different industries." Liu Shaowei said that in 2019, the alliance will also land six demonstration lines, and conduct joint innovation with universities or research institutes, and continue to release new white papers in the form of white papers. In addition, it will also conduct test bed experiments with some smart factories to advance towards commercial use. It will also continue to cooperate deeply with other standard organizations internationally.

At the end of his speech, Liu Shaowei quoted Ram Charan's words, "The digital transformation of many traditional enterprises has just begun. If you dare to be the first in the world, you may subvert the industry." He emphasized that although many people believe that as long as you choose a vent, you can fly, the goal of the Edge Computing Industry Alliance is not to choose a vent, but to create the wind, which is an important responsibility of the alliance. "I hope that we can create this wind in the next few years, so that more enterprises and more organizations can fly."

[51CTO original article, please indicate the original author and source as 51CTO.com when reprinting on partner sites]