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Huawei opens Intelligent Mining Innovation Lab in China
On February 9, Huawei has inaugurated the new Intelligent Mining Innovation Lab in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province. This Lab is opened by the People’s Government of Shanxi Province, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Jinneng Holding Group, and Shanxi Cloud Era Technology Co. Ltd.
The purpose behind the setup of this lab is to help coal mines in Shanxi Province, reduce staffing for high-risk positions, increase efficiency, and improve intrinsic safety by exploring new uses of ICT technologies including wireless industrial control networks, industrial optical ring networks, and cloud computing.
The Intelligent Mining Innovation Lab is the result of a deep partnership between Huawei and the People’s Government of Shanxi Province, which is aimed at creating a digital ecosystem for all, by all, and for all. Shanxi is one of China’s largest energy-producing provinces and has extensive experience and diverse application scenarios in coal production.
This lab has a staff of 220 ICT and coal mining experts, seeking to make breakthroughs in areas such as information networks, automation enablement, intelligent sensing technologies, and big data generated by coal mines, as well as related ecosystem collaboration opportunities.
Alongside this, Huawei also signed individual strategic partnership agreements with Jinneng Holding Group and Shanxi Cloud Era Technology Co., Ltd., to explore duplicable technology models, application modules, standards systems, and talent cultivation, among other areas.
In attendance at the lab’s opening ceremony were also representatives from the People’s Government of Shanxi Province, including from the provincial Science and Technology Department, Department of Industry and Information Technology, and Transformation and Comprehensive Reform Demonstration Zone, as well as representatives from Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Jinneng Holding Group, Shanxi Cloud Era Technology Co., Ltd., and Shanxi ZhiChuang City Technology Development Co., Ltd.
Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei said that Huawei hopes to combine ICT with coal mining technologies to support digital and intelligent transformation across the coal industry, realize a production model that features fewer workers, greater safety, and higher efficiency as well as enable coal mine workers to wear suits and ties at work.
Additionally, Ren stated that the lab will explore how intelligent development in the global mining industry will proceed: “In 2020, we illuminated one coal mine, one iron and steel plant, and one port. Over the next two to three years, we aim to illuminate hundreds of coal mines, iron and steel plants, and ports.”
Since 2019, Huawei has explored intelligent transformation with multiple partners in Shanxi’s coal industry, resulting in many intelligent coal mining solutions that have delivered positive results in unmanned, intelligent, clean, and low-carbon operations.
These previous projects inspire confidence in the Intelligent Mining Innovation Lab’s future success in making breakthroughs in scientific research to resolve industry pain points, including high-risk production, poor work conditions, and difficult-to-manage mining equipment.
The coal industry’s main goal for digital transformation is to improve safety and efficiency. Work conditions in mining pits can be extreme and monitoring produces massive amounts of data that needs to reach the surface in real-time. This results in very high uplink traffic, but very low downlink traffic.
To address these factors, Huawei has worked with its industry partners to develop compact wireless base stations that are resistant to dampness, dust, and explosions, and support a 3:1 uplink/downlink bandwidth ratio. Through networking optimization and innovation, the precision of remote equipment controls in pits can be increased from 99.9% to 99.99%.
Huawei plans to use the Intelligent Mining Innovation Lab as a place to continue innovating with partners and making breakthroughs in technologies that can be used in mining pits, including self-cleaning cameras, low-frequency wireless transmission, and risk prediction technologies. These will support robot utilization in key scenarios and unmanned operations in select areas. This lab ultimately aims to help Shanxi’s mines reduce staffing in fully mechanized and intelligent mining scenarios by 60% and the number of workers going down to mining pits each shift by 10% to 20%.
These goals are in line with a recent call from the Chinese government to put “people and life first”. The lab’s breakthroughs in scientific research will support “safety and prosperity enabled by scientific and technological means” and ensure “three no’s and one reduction” within mining pits (i.e., no accidents, no manned shifts, no manned patrols, and staffing reduction). In turn, this will allow the provincial government to use science and technology to manage coal mine production and safety.
The opening of this lab also marks another step Huawei has taken to delve deep into industrial production and decision-making systems and better understand the digital transformation needs of key industrial business scenarios. Part of this initiative includes Huawei’s internal “Coal Mine Corps”, established in January 2021, which will combine industry-specific basic research, product research, and market delivery to shorten related value chains and rapidly respond to market demands.
In addition to promoting the digital transformation of the global coal industry, Huawei has announced its intention to act as “a technology enabler”, working with partners to create healthy industry and business ecosystems and helping its customers in the coal industry deliver more social value.
Huawei leader Xu Zhijun brought us the good news that his company has achieved a breakthrough in chipset manufacturing and the company will kick off this journey with a 14nm chip node and above.
According to the information, the hardware development tool development team and the supported domestic partner made it possible to achieve a breakthrough at the root of the technology.
The team has introduced new architecture, released a cloud-native schematic diagram tool, created a high-speed and high-sensitive PCB layout too, and improved the 2D/3D CAD tool for structural design.
Huawei has developed a chip design EDA tool team alongside Chinese EDA companies to jointly create EDA tools required to process 14nanometer and above semiconductors.
The rotating chairman confirmed that the basic requirement of localizing these development EDA tools for 14nm and above will complete its comprehensive verification in 2023. In the past three years, Huawei has focused on three R&D production lines hardware development, software development, and chip development.
The Chinese tech maker has worked hard to build our tools and completed the replacement of 78 software/hardware development tools, ensuring the continuity of R&D operations.
Breakthrough:
Huawei said its software development tool is planning the entire operations since 2018. It moved to create a complete software toolchain from coding, compilation, testing, security, construction, and release to deployment and achieve the strategy of self-development.
Also to deliver joint research and development with partners to solve the tool continuity question. Huawei also has the strong support of over 100000 software engineers to provide external services based on Huawei Cloud to achieve internal and external consistency.
As of today, Huawei and its partners have released 11 product development tools and all of the partners are equally eligible to use the production line.
Currently, over 200,000 software developers and 197,000 hardware developers are using the tools developed by us or jointly developed with our partners every month. At the same time, 203 companies are willing to pay to use our software tools.
Xu Zhijun said that Have has made a lot of breakthroughs in product development tools over the years. However, the company still facing many challenges, and there are many product development tools that are yet to make breakthroughs.
This is amazing information coming from the company. Aside from mid-range and budget devices, Huawei can utilize the 14nm chip in network equipment and other products with low processing nodes.
Still, we have to wait for more inputs on this matter and the company’s plans for future manufacturing of the chipset.
(source)
Global consumers are excited about the next Huawei smartphones and the company said it will continue to operate in the global market with smartphones and other new products.
Huawei Consumer Business Group COO, He Gang said that Huawei will keep releasing new smartphones, smartwatches, PCs, audio, and other smart products for global consumers.
The latest comment from the COO came during a media interview after the launch of the Huawei P60 series smartphones. He Gang also said that Huawei launched the latest flagship in Spring, which means its products are returning to normal and it’s good news for everyone.
Delayed in the past:
After the U.S. sanctions, Huawei was restricted from purchasing the required hardware technologies to build new smartphones and other devices. The low yield leads to the market share drop.
That’s why Huawei only launched one flagship, P50 Pro in 2021. The phone made it to the global market 6 months after in the first quarter of 2022. On the other hand, the last year’s Huawei Mate 50 Pro made its way to global consumers within 2 months.
These phones were launched without Google Mobile Services (GMS) and Play Store. Therefore, the sales volume in the overseas market remained invisible due to the GMS requirements. Another factor that hit Huawei phones is 5G connectivity. Still, Huawei managed to fill these downsides with new features and powerful camera technologies.
Aside from smartphones, Hauwei is continuously launching new smartwatches and earbuds devices for global customers and it has only increased.
According to the information, Huawei already announced Huawei P60 series will launch on May 9th in Munich and will be accompanied by Huawei Mate X3 and other products.
Huawei first launched satellite communication technology with the Huawei Mate 50 series and the company may not upgrade this phone to second-gen satellite features.
Huawei CBG COO, He Gang gave us the answer that the eligibility to upgrade over second generation satellite is related to the phone’s performance. He may be talking about the hardware as the new devices equip better antennas.
He further added that the company has no current plans to upgrade Huawei Mate 50 and Mate Xs 2 to second-gen satellite communication. However, there is more reason that he mentioned in this matter.
Now the Beidou satellite communication is in the public testing stage, about 30 free sending and receiving are provided every month, and many friends are wondering how long this policy will last. If commercial, what is the approximate price?
He gange said that Huawei is not an operator and cannot operate this satellite communication business. The current state of technology is in the stage of crowd-testing.
This includes testing with multiple organizations and providing such a free service to everyone in the way of crowd testing.
As for the commercial price, how to operate in the future will still be only decided by the operators and not by Huawei. The Huawei COO emphasized that Huawei is actively participating to cultivate a better tech industry and crowd-testing technologies. This will lead to the better of future organizations and achieve technological breakthroughs.
Second-gen satellite:
Huawei P60 series, Mate X3, and Watch Ultimate are equipped with second-generation satellite communication. This allows the users to send and receive an emergency SMS via satellite without a mobile network. However, the first-gen tech only allows one-way SMS.
