Recently, Huawei announced that Huawei's 2023 Olympus Awards are officially open to global public solicitation. This year, there are two technical problems, each with a reward of 1 million yuan, and the total reward amount reaches 2 million yuan. The two problems Huawei announced this time are "storage technology with extremely cost-effective per bit" and "data enablement and resilience technology for emerging businesses."
To understand these two problems literally, they should belong to the storage field and the data processing field respectively. As a new production factor, data has become a basic resource and a strategic resource. AI large models are developing rapidly, and computing power, data sets, and parameters are growing explosively, bringing infrastructure changes and placing higher requirements on high-speed networks and high-speed storage. Scenario-based applications for thousands of industries under ecological collaboration will become the next hot spot. It is necessary to build a multi-protocol integration, stable, efficient, and safe storage base to support the entire life cycle of data from generation, storage, transmission to processing. Data enablement and resilience technologies for emerging businesses are important challenges posed to the storage industry in the era of data economy.
According to Huawei’s official public account, the 2023 Olympus Awards include 2 Olympus Awards and 5 Olympus Pioneer Awards, which are awards for individuals and teams.
According to Huawei’s official public account, the selection principles are mainly based on technical value and commercial value. Among them, technical value includes three aspects: goal achievement, technological innovation, and technological maturity; commercial value also includes three aspects: 1. Applicability, the results have transformation and application value; 2. Scalability, the results have great development prospects and scalability potential; 3. The results have potential social or economic benefits.
According to Huawei's introduction, the "Olympus Mons Awards" were established by Huawei in 2019. They aim to lead the direction of basic theoretical research in the global data storage field, break through key technical problems, accelerate the industrialization of scientific research results, and achieve win-win cooperation between industry, academia and research. Since its establishment, the Olympus Award has attracted the participation of more than 180 scholars from 60+ scientific research teams around the world, and a total of 3 Olympus Awards and 9 Olympus Pioneer Awards have been awarded. The Olympus Award has become one of the most influential professional awards in the storage industry.
In terms of previous achievements, the team led by Professor OnurMutlu of ETH Zurich focused on the research of data-centered network storage and computing integration systems, innovated adaptive optimization algorithms, and accelerated the technical iteration of storage architecture, and won the 2022 Olympus Award. Professor Jin Hai’s team from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Professor Zhao Weisheng’s team from Beihang University, Professor Miao Xiangshui’s team from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Teacher Liu Jian’s team from Zhejiang University won the 2022 Olympus Pioneer Award.
In terms of the list of 2021 Olympus winners, the team of Academician Zheng Weimin from Tsinghua University won the "Olympus Award" with a bonus of one million yuan. The team of Academician Liu Ming from the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the team of Professor Song Zhitang from the Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the team of Professor Lu Yutong from Sun Yat-sen University respectively won the "Olympus Pioneer Award", with an incentive scientific research reward of 500,000 yuan.
During HUAWEICONNECT2020, at the 2020 Olympus Awards Ceremony, the team of teacher Shu Jiwu from Tsinghua University won the "Olympus Award" and a million-dollar bonus. The team of teacher Chen Rong from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the team of teacher Feng Dan from Huazhong University of Science and Technology won the "Olympus Pioneer Award" respectively.
Huawei invests heavily in research and development.
On August 30, Huawei disclosed its 2023 semi-annual report on the official website of the Shanghai Clearing House. In the first half of the year, Huawei achieved revenue of 308.29 billion yuan, compared with 298.68 billion yuan in the same period last year; net profit was 46.523 billion yuan, compared with 14.629 billion yuan in the same period last year. It is worth noting that in the first half of 2023, Huawei's research and development expenses were 82.604 billion yuan, an increase of 3.541 billion yuan year-on-year, and 79.063 billion yuan in the same period last year.
Source: Shangqing Institute website
In 2022, Huawei's R&D expenses will be 161.5 billion yuan, accounting for 25.1% of its annual revenue. R&D investment has reached a record high in the company's history. In the past ten years, Huawei has invested more than 977.3 billion yuan in cumulative research and development expenses.
Huawei's R&D employees are still increasing. As of December 31, 2022, Huawei had approximately 207,000 employees, including approximately 114,000 R&D employees, accounting for approximately 55% of the total number of employees.
Continuous investment in research and development will allow Huawei to achieve results in patents. Huawei is one of the world's largest patent holders, holding a total of 120,000 valid authorized patents worldwide. In 2022, Huawei continued to rank first with 7,689 PCT international patent applications. Huawei uses intensive investment to ensure high-quality business continuity and enhance product competitiveness.