The digital economy in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has a new engine now! China Telecom Research Institute and China Telecom Guangdong recently announced that they have made a significant breakthrough in AI DCN — completion of the world's first live-network test of optical-electrical synergy network architecture.
This milestone achievement marks a historic leap from a follower to a leader in the network architecture of China's AI DC era. This new type of AI DC is designed for future training and training-inference integration scenarios with clusters of more than 10,000 AI cards. Its high-quality DCN network provides inclusive computing power services for the whole province, strongly supporting the high-quality development of computing-network convergence in the AI era.
The network architecture of AI DCs is innovatively upgraded. Based on the optical-electrical synergy technology, the traditional electrical switch stacking architecture is successfully upgraded to a new AI DC system. The innovation uses all-optical switches, optical-electrical synergy control platform, and innovative optical-electrical hybrid communication algorithms to reconstruct the optimal network topology in real time based on requirements in different scenarios such as AI training and inference. According to the test data, this architecture has four core advantages.
First, after the optical-electrical hybrid network architecture is upgraded, the point-to-point communication latency of Ascend AI cards is reduced by 14%, and the response efficiency of latency-sensitive services is significantly improved. Second, the all-optical switching technology is used to reduce the number of required optical modules by 17% and save hardware investment. Third, innovative all-optical switches are introduced to implement rate-independent evolution and support seamless access of different generations of AI cards. Fourth, the overall power consumption of the DCN cluster network is slashed by 19%, reducing carbon emissions and saving energy.
With the AI DC of Guangzhou South Base as the core hub and the 1 ms latency metro network as a solid foundation, users can enjoy ultimate computing experiences with zero latency and millisecond-level response. This new network breaks through geographical and hierarchical boundaries, implements intelligent scheduling of computing resources, builds a wide-coverage and inclusive computing ecosystem, and provides comprehensive AI application services for 12 key industries.
In the future, China Telecom will continue to deepen the deployment of new productivity in the AI era, accelerate the construction of next-generation AI DCs, and build an intelligent computing network featuring cloud-edge-device synergy. China Telecom will work with the industry, academia, and research institutes to promote the "AI+" action plan, accelerate digital and intelligent upgrades in industries, scientific research, people's livelihood, and city governance, and continuously inject innovation momentum into the digital and intelligent economy of the Greater Bay Area.
