At Yunqi Conference in 2016, Alibaba Cloud delivered a surging momentum to the outside world.
In addition to user blowouts and technology updates, Alibaba Cloud has begun to lay the groundwork for many ordinary people to understand and feel. Wang Jian, Chairman of the Alibaba Technical Committee, repeatedly mentioned two cases that made him proud:
Maxcompute, using Hangzhou as a pilot to build an urban brain, as a straight path for pilots, can improve traffic efficiency by 11% through cloud computing.
Batch calculations help the Chinese Seismological Bureau calculate the stratigraphic imaging and obtain valuable data to explore resources and predict earthquakes.
When Alibaba Cloud Product Director Li Jin announced Alibaba Cloud's price cut by half on the scene, he had already clearly conveyed a message to the outside world: Alibaba Cloud believes that it has enough technical power to significantly reduce the cost of cloud computing. , And in this way in the cloud computing market "killed".
In the eyes of Li Jin, Alibaba Cloud’s attack on the city was due to its technical strength. The core of technical strength is only one, that is, Alibaba Cloud beyond imagination. In his words: "Computing power is the ability to bring together all the capabilities."
However, Alibaba's commercial success is far from Li Jin's ultimate goal. He believes that the meaning of computing power to humanity may exceed our imagination. He told Lei Feng:
In the final analysis, the calculations are trying to gain time for mankind.
Aliyun Product Director Li Jin Moore's Law "Nirvana" Moore's Law did not fail, but slowed down. Improvements in the processing and performance of the hardware have not stopped, but it may not be possible to double the speed in 18 months. But this does not prevent our calculation efficiency from doubling.
The increase in computing power seen by Li Jin is not only the hardware's own responsibility but the combined results of hardware and software efficiency.
In the past year, China purchased about 2 million X86-based servers. However, the efficiency of these computers is only 3%-5%.
Personal equipment, including PCs and laptops you buy home, is only working less than 1% of the time each day. Even if you use the most frequently used mobile phones, the cores inside are idle for a large amount of time every day. In other words, there is a lot of computing power in the world that is idle and wasted.
"Crushing performance" is the "killer" used by Li Jin to improve Ali cloud computing power after hardware Moore's law is weak. In a nutshell, the code is to be a whip, constantly whipping idle CPUs and GPUs. From this point of view, Moore's Law does not die, but uses another form of “Nirvanaâ€.
Gordon Moore, the founder of Moore's Law of Intel Corporation
Although according to the data, there is still much room for improvement in software efficiency. However, it is a huge and tedious task to improve the scheduling efficiency when tens of thousands of cores work in coordination.
Virtualization technology was born in the United States. Therefore, most of the cloud computing companies use either the underlying isolation technology or the digital protection capabilities are in the hands of the US giants. But at the bottom of Alibaba Cloud, we wrote all the code ourselves, which made it possible for us to make changes from the bottom. Based on the existing data, we can already foresee that the underlying computing resources will be released in large numbers in the future. This is why we dared to cut prices.
According to Li Jin, Alibaba Cloud’s technological “running†is the greatest respect for the precious computing resources of human beings.
Never-ending evolutionIt is the responsibility of Alibaba Cloud's core system to “fly†to deploy chip resources to increase “software monetization efficiencyâ€. So, how does Flying intend to "squeeze" the computing performance of the chip? Li Jin cited an example:
"The large-scale general-purpose calculations performed by the CPU and the high-density calculations performed by the GPU are like the difference between a bus and a sports car. One can hold many people and one can run very quickly. But these two methods of calculation At present, they are mutually substitute, and in the foreseeable future with the existing technology, it is difficult to integrate.
As for the future there will be a chip that takes into account the advantages of the CPU and GPU, or there are many dedicated XPU, it is difficult to make a judgment.
Li Jin told Lei Fengwang (searching for the "Lei Feng Net" public concern) that the speed at which buses run out of sports cars is not realistic at present. What Aliyun can do is "enhance the management of buses and sports cars" and make this system "overall effective."
For example, the Tesla car is equipped with a GPU because its autopilot system handles a lot of audio and video information. Alibaba Cloud's flying operating system is mainly responsible for the scheduling of computing resources. When it encounters high-demand computing, it uses a GPU. For computing that requires low real-time performance, it uses a general-purpose CPU.
It is through the scheduling improvement of one line of code that can improve the overall computing efficiency of Alibaba Cloud.
Many industry professionals, including Li Jin, have endorsed a clear evolutionary path for cloud computing: from cloud storage to distributed computing, to large-scale distributed computing, to artificial intelligence.
In his eyes, the so-called tomorrow's technology, "self-driving car" and "AI" are essentially evolutionary forms in which the computing capability has been upgraded to a certain stage.
As for the evolution of computing power after AI, what will happen? He said:
After computing power exceeds a high point, it will show "intuition." Just like our human instincts, it is difficult for you to feel the complex calculation process of your brain, but you can get the correct answer in a short time.
I think that all the things in the world can be calculated. If there is an omnipotent God in the world, he can give clear and simple answers to all your questions.
Li Jin believes that Alibaba Cloud has been able to obtain this ability to answer all questions since its inception. Making money is only a by-product of dreams.
Therefore, fundamentally speaking, the indicator for judging cloud computing capabilities is actually very simple, that is, computing power. If your propulsive ability is weaker than others, you will lose.
Alibaba Cloud has done a lot of model work, and ordinary people can also feel the power of cloud computing. However, it is hard for people to see the real core computing power. But this is indeed the core capability of cloud computing. No one in this world can help you, but rely on our own scientists.
Computation is fighting for time for humanityThe call signs of the prophets are often ridiculed by people as "dreams of ignorance." To a certain extent, ordinary people who are enveloped in "in front of you" can hardly feel the human desire for computing power.
Li Jin told Lei Feng network the following story.
We cannot accurately predict earthquakes because we know little about the information inside the earth's crust. Even we do not have a complete picture of what kind of structure the earth beneath our feet is.
In order to obtain a clear picture of the earth, the China State Seismological Bureau is preparing to conduct measurements through thousands of seismic stations all over the country.
The reason why the imaging work on the earth was handed over to the Seismological Bureau was because our technology could not directly detect the depths of the earth by drilling wells, so seismic waves have become the best way to “feel†the earth.
The principle diagram of the use of seismic waves to achieve ground-based imaging / picture provided by Dr. Wang Weitao
Dr. Wang Weitao of the State Seismological Bureau told Lei Fengwang that the first step in mapping the earth was to calculate the daily data obtained by different seismic stations. This calculation requires cross-correlation calculations for all data components between any two seismic stations.
In other words, the data for each degree of each day between each seismic station must be calculated one after the other. This calculation is astronomical.
Dr. Weitao Wang performed a calculation that is not full data on Alibaba Cloud. However, only this calculation requires the calculation of 500,000 paths, and the function of the superposition processing reaches 1 billion. If you use a traditional stand-alone operation, the time required is 10 months.
Alibaba Cloud's computing power reduced the entire calculation time to 48 hours.
Cloud computing acceleration process and model/image provided by Dr. Wang Weitao
Li Jin said with emotion:
When the calculation results were output, all our technicians were silent. How much we are eager for such data to be calculated several decades earlier, so that we can secure precious time for humans to predict earthquakes. If we come back, when we face those terrible earthquakes, history will not be what we have experienced. But technology does not come out of thin air. Sometimes we must wait.
There are many stories about the calculation of time for humanity.
FAST, a large-scale radio telescope China has just completed, is using Aliyun's computing power to analyze distant space. Before FAST, only the world’s best astronomical telescope discovered 1000 pulsars. It is expected that FAST can discover 7,000 pulsars every year.
This, for the first time, human beings have acquired such a powerful ability to explore livable planets. Our journey is the sea of ​​stars, and the sea of ​​stars, tortured by humanity's top computing power.
China 500m diameter spherical radio telescope FAST
According to the data provided by the National Astronomical Observatory, the LAMOST produces 10 TB of data each year, while the National Astronomical Observatory (LSST) generates 10 TB of data each day, and the exploration of FAST, which is a universe of 13.7 billion light years away, is generated every night. The data will reach 50TB. It is estimated that by 2025, data related to astronomical observations will be 25 billion TB per year.
For the analysis of such a large amount of data, only cloud computing may do it.
There is no back-up for the earth we live in. The truth of the universe is as early as one day. The discovery of a livable planet as early as one day can change our destiny. This is not worrying people because God never gives us mercy. Our power in the universe comes from the iron-like computing power in our hands.
These are values ​​that cannot be calculated.