Future in progress.

This is the theme of ZTE at the 2024 MWC Shanghai exhibition—distinguished from the global MWC exhibition held in Barcelona, Spain, also known as "MWC Barcelona," the MWC Shanghai exhibition is also referred to as "Mini MWC" by the industry—continuing the theme from MWC Barcelona in February and representing ZTE's strategic layout of "computing power + connectivity"面向未来.

As one of the most influential annual events in the global communications industry, ZTE delivered its "homework" in areas such as connectivity, computing power, industrial digitization, and terminals, echoing this theme. During the conference and exhibition, three key points stood out: a keynote speech, a full-stack and full-scenario intelligent computing solution, and a series of innovative AI terminals.

ZTE President: AI Will Profoundly Reshape the Global Economic Landscape

On June 26, the opening day of "Mini MWC," ZTE President Xu Ziyang delivered two speeches. One was a keynote speech on the theme of "Artificial Intelligence First," and the other was at the GTI International Industry Conference (Shanghai). Although the themes differed, the core of his speeches centered around ZTE's digital and intelligent practices and innovations under the wave of artificial intelligence.

Taking the "Artificial Intelligence First" keynote speech as an example, Xu Ziyang stated that although generative AI is still in its early stages of development, there is a general consensus that the world has entered an AI-driven industrial revolution, and AI will have a profound impact and transformation on all aspects of production and life. Artificial intelligence will profoundly reshape the global economic landscape.

Industry consultancies predict that by 2030, AI will significantly contribute to China's GDP growth by 26% and North America's GDP growth by 14.5%, expected to contribute approximately $10.7 trillion in economic growth globally, accounting for nearly 70% of the global impact. This transformation will bring unprecedented business opportunities to industries such as retail, financial services, and healthcare.

However, challenges coexist with opportunities. In addition to issues such as hallucinations, security, and ethics, the development of generative AI also faces challenges such as computing power, energy consumption, datasets, standardization, and commercial applications. To seize the new wave of AI, it is necessary to achieve advanced development from multiple aspects.

To this end, ZTE proposes the core propositions of advanced computing networks, balanced training and inference, and open decoupling.

Breaking it down, he believes that the first step is to break through technological bottlenecks, strengthen research in areas such as architecture, algorithms, computing networks, and hardware-software co-optimization, and improve AI training and inference efficiency. Secondly, ensure reliability, security, and interpretability through various solutions such as RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and Agents to achieve widespread application and higher value of large models, balancing the improvement of large model capabilities and commercial closed loops;

Finally, accelerate standardization through "open decoupling" to build a prosperous industrial and commercial ecosystem. Although AI technology is rapidly iterating, the current ecosystem is still generally closed, and there is a lack of industry standards, which brings a series of issues such as redundant development and resource waste, technological isolation and risk concentration, limited choices, and supply monopolies, restricting the rapid and healthy development of AI.

Launch of Full-stack and Full-scenario Intelligent Computing Solution

As a key message in Xu Ziyang's keynote speech, he stated that ZTE advocates building a full-stack open intelligent computing solution. Subsequently, ZTE released its full-stack and full-scenario intelligent computing solution, covering multiple aspects such as computing power, networks, capabilities, intelligence, and applications, and bringing a series of important achievements to promote the development of the AI industry.

ZTE's relevant person in charge told Tang Chen that this full-stack and full-scenario intelligent computing solution aims precisely at the many challenges facing AI development, such as computing power, energy consumption, datasets, standardization, and commercial applications.

For example, for data centers, ZTE provides end-to-end lifecycle service capabilities from consulting planning to integrated delivery, and low-carbon energy-saving technology achieves a PUE of as low as 1.1 for liquid-cooled data centers. For comparison, the PUE limit of data centers using traditional air-cooling technology is generally 1.25. Industry experts estimate that the market penetration rate of liquid-cooled data centers in China will exceed 20% by 2025.

Another example is the AI Booster intelligent computing platform, which can minimize model development and migration costs, enabling efficient and seamless migration of large models from the CUDA ecosystem to a CUDA-like ecosystem. At the same time, it can display the entire process of model training fine-tuning and inference applications through a guided toolchain, realizing engineering capabilities and effectively improving the development efficiency of large models and AI applications.

Particularly noteworthy is that ZTE held a Nebula Communication Large Model Launch Event, officially launching the Nebula Communication Large Model series of products, covering Nebula Communication Large Models, Agent Factories, and serialized application products. By providing a complete system from models to platforms to applications, it accelerates the advancement towards high-order self-intelligent networks.

ZTE Vice President Zheng Peng mentioned that self-intelligent networks have achieved phased results after years of collaboration and development. On the path to L4+ high-order self-intelligence, large models, as a revolutionary iteration of artificial intelligence, are leading the further release of AI potential with their powerful learning and generation capabilities, ultimately achieving network collective intelligence, thereby bringing about a fundamental change in network operation paradigms.

ZTE's Nebula Communication Large Model, based on the "ZTE Digital Nebula" composable architecture, realizes cross-domain collaboration through agents, fully utilizes large model capabilities, promotes a leapfrogging transformation from "human + machine" to "machine + human," reshapes the operation and maintenance system, and creates an accelerator towards high-order self-intelligent networks.

In addition, ZTE's proposed large model Agent Factory solution produces and assembles agents through "knowledge workshops," "skill workshops," and "assembly workshops." The emergence of Agent Factories will reconstruct traditional application development models, forming a new product form. Facing complex scenarios, various agents are flexibly orchestrated, human-computer interaction is achieved through LUI, and planning and tool invocation capabilities are utilized, fully integrating existing network AI micro-model capabilities and network atomic capabilities, enabling smooth evolution of the operation and maintenance system.

Launch of Full-scenario AI Terminal Applications and Naked-eye 3D New Products

ZTE has always been an important player in the communications field. At this exhibition, multiple intelligent terminals under its brand were showcased, covering mobile phones, tablets, laptops, PCs, and mobile internet products. In terms of exhibition design, surrounding the product strategy and concept of "AI for All," ZTE's terminal business set up six AI-themed displays covering applications and products such as AI naked-eye 3D, AI simultaneous interpretation and dialect translation, AI security anti-fraud, AI intelligent business and creation, Red Magic AI game cube, and AI magic imaging.

In terms of hardware, ZTE also jointly launched an AI naked-eye 3D mobile phone with China Mobile—the ZTE Yuanhang 3D, as well as the world's first 5G+AI naked-eye 3D tablet nubia PAD 3D II. Although the former is a mid-range phone, it integrates 5G, AI, and naked-eye 3D technology, equipped with the industry's first AI+3D software and hardware integrated ecosystem. With ZTE's exclusive Neovision 3D Anytime technology, users can flexibly switch between 2D and 3D display modes, whether for watching movies, gaming, or socializing, to obtain a unique 3D visual experience.

The latter is an upgraded version of the previously released Nubia naked-eye 3D tablet, equipped with an AI engine super bionic eye, providing a larger 3D shooting range and achieving creative-level 3D spatial computational photography, bringing users an immersive visual and creative new experience. Judging from the specifications and pricing of these two products, ZTE is sparing no effort in promoting the popularization and commercial application of AI and 5G.

At the same time, ZTE and Nubia's mobile phone families, such as the ZTE Axon 60 Ultra, Red Magic 9 Pro series, Nubia Z60 series, etc., were also on display at the exhibition, attracting many visitors. In addition, ZTE also brought many black technology products, such as the ZTE U60 Pro portable Wi-Fi, ZTE G5 Ultra intelligent terminal, and mobile internet satellite terminals, a phone accessory that claims to allow satellite phone calls without changing phones.

AI security anti-fraud is also a hot topic at this conference. ZTE's solution in this area is based on an anti-fraud large model. The new engine can not only accurately identify fraud risks in calls and text messages but also identify AI-synthesized voices and AI-synthesized videos. With multi-modal hierarchical model computing, it significantly improves recognition accuracy, supporting capabilities such as WeChat anti-fraud and identifying multiple fraud scenarios. ZTE also provides a million-level fraud corpus and ultra-long text detection capabilities to effectively protect users' privacy and security in the AI era.

Prior to this, the day before the official start of the 2024 MWC Shanghai exhibition, Tang Chen also participated in ZTE's 5G-A Smart Park experience event, which was held at Century Park, not far from the main venue of Mini MWC. This is a benchmark project jointly created by ZTE and Shanghai Telecom. Here, citizens can experience novel park visits such as AR sightseeing, seamless and delay-free network connectivity, wireless live streaming, low-altitude communication, and drone food delivery.

Behind this is the release of 5G-A (5G-Advanced, an evolved and enhanced version of 5G networks, commonly referred to as 5.5G) technological capabilities, which is also an important topic at this Mini MWC. Multiple leading ICT vendors have asserted that 2024 is the first year of 5G-A commercialization. ZTE has continuously explored and extensively validated in terms of technology, scenarios, and industries, such as enabling AR live streaming with 5G-A Gigabit experiences, integrated sensing and communication, air-ground-space integration, and ubiquitous intelligence, continuously advancing network-industry integration and computing-network integration. At the exhibition area, the first show of 5G-A-enabled lightweight AR live streaming brought a relaxing and fun new live streaming experience, as well as the industry's first 5G-A base station supporting Gigabit experiences and integrated sensing and communication business demonstrations.