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Huawei’s AI fabric eclipses other data centre offerings
Wed, 3rd Apr 2019
FYI, this story is more than a year old

This week Huawei celebrated its AI Fabric Intelligent and Lossless Data Center Network solution passing the comparison test by the international test organisation, Tolly Group.

According to the results, in typical service scenarios of data centers oriented to the artificial intelligence (AI) era, Huawei's AI Fabric boasts a superior performance to other mainstream vendors in the industry.

The company is hedging its bets on AI, as its own ‘Global Industry Vision' (GIV) report forecasts the AI procurement rate will reach 86% by 2025, and leveraging AI to make decisions, reshape business models and ecosystems, and rebuild customer experiences will be a key driving force.

In the test from Tolly, Huawei's data center switch networking solutions were compared with other mainstream vendor solutions – including Cisco and Mellanox - in three typical application scenarios of data centers in the AI era; high performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), and distributed storage.

The solutions were measured against the Intel MPI Benchmark (IMB) model and TensorFlow model, as well as performance indicators such as throughput, packet loss rate, and latency in the same spine-leaf networking environment with all-100GE and 100GE/25GE. After rigorous testing, Huawei AI Fabric scored highest in every performance indicator, performing 30% better on average.

"In the AI era, data center networks must transform towards becoming intelligent and lossless, and this solution has already been put into commercial use in leading internet enterprises,” says Huawei Data Center Network Domain president Leon Wang.

“We are delighted that Tolly has conducted independent and stringent testing on Huawei AI Fabric, the results of which signify the industry recognition of the solution.

Huawei's GIV also predicts AI to drive ICT infrastructure transformation, and the company says its AI Fabric Intelligent and Lossless Data Center Network solution is a direct answer to that in helping enterprises build high-performance data centers and accelerate the commercial use of AI services.

"We will continue to increase R-D investment and technological innovation, promote the development of the data communication industry, and provide customers and partners with leading products and solutions,” says Wang.

The Tolly Group founder and CEO Kevin Tolly says Huawei is in a powerful position looking forward to the future.

"Through our thorough testing and verification, we are highly impressed by the network performance of the Huawei AI Fabric solution with its zero packet loss, low latency, and high throughput,” says Tolly.

“Customers can clearly see the solution's value from the complete test report. With more intelligent scheduling and lossless forwarding, we believe that it will lead the construction of data center networks in the AI era."