对华为系统软件的战略思考(下)–(11) 存亡之秋

11. 存亡之秋

      笔者通过上面各章节中的数据和现象分析证明，华为如果不断然进行加强技术储备，技术改造，技术创新的战略举措，离走向衰弱和最后崩溃其实是为期不远。

      华为必须首先是一个高技术公司，而后才可能是一个国际化的公司。目前华为只是一个集成商而已，靠的是产品的廉价，靠的是人力资源的低成本。

      笔者建议华为应该立刻考虑如下战略性措施：建立华为真正的研发研究院和调整华为CTO Office在整个华为研发和产品设计中的作用。

      华为的中央研究院，北京研究所等其实就是工程(Engineering)部门，误用研究(Research)二字。从各方面情况看，华为是应该建立其自己真正的研究实验室的时候了。

一个国家的工业技术水平高低，抛开国家大环境，主要取决于两方面：

*高等教育和基础研究的水平。

*应用研究(Applied Research)的水平

我们有充足的理由相信我们的高等教育和基础研究水平是落后的。落后的原因是教育体制的落后，教师(授)水平的落后。大量优秀的学生流向海外。造成严重的人才流失。并且大部分最后定位在工业界工作，定居，并成为许多公司的技术骨干。少部分留在了学术界。

从目前看来，学术界的人才有回流迹象。这是非常好的现象。但估计仍然需要10，20年左右，国内的学术界才能基本上焕然一新。

只有国家的不断富强，人才的不断回流，我们才可能有大量的人才储备。否则中国的崛起只可能是一句空话。

然后，学术界的人才是不够的，对工业界的研发是意义不大的。

高校和教授们的作用是为工业界提供人才。但这些人才就像是刚入山门的小和尚。需要磨炼才能是真正的人才。从工业界的角度而言，教授们也不都是人才。

问题在哪里？ 答案是：应用研究(Applied Research).

是的，中国强烈缺乏的是应用研究人才。是能在工业界把握复杂的大系统, 把握新方向，定义新产品，开发高技术含量产品的人才。

应用研究的开展只能在工业界才现实。高校不太现实，也是没有这个能力的。

如何开展工业界的应用研究？ 成立研究中心和实验室，和相应的人才体制。

那么在大公司成立研究中心务虚，还是非常必要的？

我们来环顾一下世界各大著名公司在这方面的情况：

IBM RESEARCH LAB，MICROSOFT LAB，SUN LAB，HP LAB，SRI，XEROX PARC

INTEL LAB，BELL LAB，Google Lab，Nokia Research Center，Siemens Corporate Research

Cisco Research Center

……

这个列表可以很长。我们可以非常容易的认识到，应用研究中心对于一个大公司是非常必要的。是一个公司工程研发的摇篮，是驱动一个公司工程部门定义产品的技术方向的主力，是提高一个公司产品的门槛值得重要核心环节，是提高一个公司专利保护，从而使得一个公司可以在激烈市场竞争中博弈的重要保障。

我们来更加仔细的研究一下华为的竞争对手Cisco的研究中心。

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac207/crc/index1.html

其任务是：”The Cisco Research Center coordinates Cisco’s internal and external research programs, interactions with researchers in academia and at peer institutions, engagement with research groups and standards organizations, and interactions with graduate students.”

我们再来看看其最近支持(Sponsor)和参与的研究项目：

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac207/crc/examples.html

George Varghese
Department of Computer Science, University of California, San Diego
Flexible High-Speed Parsing for Network Devices Architecture
Sponsor: Flavio Bonomi

Injong Rhee
Department of Computer Science, NC State University
Stability of Congestion Control: Metrics and Protocols
Sponsor: Larry Dunn

Nancy Griffeth
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Lehman College of the City
University of New York

Nancy Lynch
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
A New MAC-Layer Paradigm for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks
Sponsor: Ralph Droms

Nick McKeown
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Stanford University
Accurate Network Timing and Synchronization
Sponsor: Tom Edsall

Sanjay Rao
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University
Monitoring Peer-to-Peer Networks for Anomalous Traffic
Sponsor: Navindra Yadav

Janardhan Iyengar
Computer Science Department, Connecticut College
Shared Bottleneck Detection and Response Mechanisms For Concurrent Multipath
Transfer (CMT)
Sponsor: Randall Stewart

Srinivasan Ramasubramanian
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Arizona
Sustainable Multipath Routing in Packet-Switched Networks With Minimum Overhead
Sponsor: Russ White

Jim Martin and James M. Westall
School of Computing, Clemson University
DOCSIS 3.0 Channel Bonding Scheduling Algorithms and Issues
Sponsor: Randall Stewart

Shigang Chen
Department of Computer & Information of Science & Engineering, University of Florida
Optimizing Access Control Lists
Sponsor: Bo Zou

Ahmed Kamal
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Iowa State University
Survivable Network Operation Using Network Coding
Sponsor: Iftekhar Hussain

Harry G. Perros
Department of Computer Science, NC State University
Multi-Domain and Single Domain Route Selection under QoS constraints
Sponsor: Tsegereda Beyene

Thomas LaPorta
Computer Science and Engineering, Penn State
Security for Internet/IMS Convergence
Sponsor: Cetin Seren

Jeffrey Andrews
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin
Network Coding’s Impact on Ad Hoc Network Capacity
Sponsors: Xuechen Yang, Jan Kruys

Yanlei Diao
Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
In-Network Complex Event Processing over Distributed Streams
Sponsor: Krishna Sankar

Michael Mitzenmacher
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
Hashing and Sampling Algorithms and Data Structures for Network Measurement,
Monitoring, and Applications
Sponsor: Flavio Bonomi

Bhuvan Urgaonkar
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University
Resource Management in Virtualization-Based Consolidated Hosting Platforms
Sponsor: Vithal Shirodkar

Timothy Griffin
Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
Applied Metarouting
Sponsor: David Ward

Paul Amer
Computer and Information Sciences Dept, University of Delaware
Improving SCTP with Non-Renegable Selective Acks (NR-SACKs)
Sponsor: Randall Stewart

Leonard Cimini
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Delaware
Beamforming in IEEE 802.11n for Wide-Area Applications
Sponsors: Brett Douglas, Jan Kruys

Jason But
Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures, Swinburne University of Technology
FreeBSD Implementation of an SCTP friendly NAT
Sponsor: Randall Stewart

George Kesidis
Department of Computer Science and Engineering; Department of Electrical
Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University
Per-flow state management in Internet routers: mass purging and heavy-hitter detection
Sponsor: Cetin Seren

Aleksandar Kuzmanovic
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University
Diagnosing Spatio-Temporal Internet Congestion Properties
Sponsor: Bruce Davie

Constantine Dovrolis
College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Ingress Traffic Engineering and Performance Routing
Sponsors: Dana Blair, Monique Morrow

King-Shan Lui
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Hong Kong
Network Parameter Representation and Quality of Service Routing in the Internet
Sponsors: Kirk Lougheed, Fred Baker

Rodney Tucker
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Melbourne
A Green Internet
Sponsors: Jeff Allison, Garry Epps

Kevin Almeroth
Department of Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara
The Last Mile: Building the Final Piece in One-to-Many Content Distribution

Magdalena Balazinska
Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of Washington
History-Enhanced Monitoring

Olivier Bonaventure, Pierre Francois
Computer Science and Engineering Department, Universit Catholique de Louvain
ICIM : Improving the Convergence of IP Multicast Routing Protocols

John Canny
Computer Science Division, University of California, Berkeley
MultiView Videoconferencing

Cristian Estan
Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison
High Performance Intrusion Prevention in Software

Michalis Faloutsos
Computer Science Department, University of California, Riverside
Automated Traffic Classification: Benchmarks and Novel Tools

Paul Francis
Computer Networking Department, Cornell University
End-Middle-End Internet Connection Establishment

Edgar Gabriel
Department of Computer Science, University of Houston
Optimizing Collective File Operations over InfinBand, Gigabit Ethernet and
Mixed Network Interconnects

Nancy Griffeth
Department of Math and Computer Sciencev Lehman College
Address Assignment in Traditional and Ad Hoc Networks

Edward Knightly
ECE and CS Departments, Rice University
Achieving High Performance and Fairness in Multihop Wireless Access Networks

Andrew Lumsdaine
Computer Science Department, Indiana University
Exploiting Multi-Path Routing for Collective Communication in MPI

Nick McKeown
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Stanford University
NetFPGA: An Open-source Teaching and Research Tool for Programmable Network Hardware

Karen Sollins
Mathematics and Computer Science Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Prediction Intelligence in the Network

Alan Wagner
Computer Science Department, University of British Columbia
Compute- and Data-Intensive Processing using MPI over SCTP

Nelson da Fonseca
Computer Engineering Department, State University of Campinas
Dynamic Traffic Grooming with Support to QoS in IP over WDM Networks

Kamil Sarac
Computer Science Department, University of Texas at Dallas
The Last Mile: Building the Final Piece in One-to-Many Content Distribution  

我们再来看看Cisco Research Center主持的Cisco Routing Research Symposium program.

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac207/crc/archive_crrs.html

“This symposium was designed as a forum to explore and highlight significant  opportunities and challenges facing the future of routing and network design and to exchange ideas that may stimulate and guide industry and academic research efforts over the next 5-10 years. It included leading academic researchers in key focus areas of the Cisco Routing and Service Provider Technology Group.”

这个研究小组发起和主持的研究项目和讨论有：

Garry Epps Cisco System Power Challenges

Mark Horowitz Stanford University Scaling, Power and the Future of CMOS

Shekhar Borkar Intel Corporation Extending and Expanding Moore’s Law -

Challenges and Opportunities

Ajith Amerasekera Texas Instruments System Power Challenges – An ASIC viewpoint

Evaldo Martins Miranda Analog Devices Power/Thermal Impact of Network Computing

Alfonso Ortega NSF and Villanova University Thermal Engineering Research

Motivated by Cooling of Electronic Systems

Farzam Toudeh-Fallah Cisco Optical and Quantum Switching Challenges

Daniel Blumenthal University of California Santa Barbara Optical Packet

Switching Methodologies

John Bowers University of California Santa Barbara 3-D MEMS-based Dynamically

Reconfigurable Optical Packet Switch (DROPS)

Mario Dagenais University of Maryland All-Optical Header Recognition

Rod Tucker University of Melbourne Optical Buffers for High-Capacity Routers

Yavuz Oruc University of Maryland Quantum Packet Switching

John Scudder Cisco Next Generation Network Architectures

Jennifer Rexford Princeton University In VINI Veritas:Realistic and Controlled Network Experimentation

Paul Francis Cornell University Small Routing Tables

Morley Mao University of Michigan Active Correlation Between the Controland Data Plane

Nick McKeown Stanford University Designing a Predictable Backbone Networkwith Valiant Load Balancing

Scott Shenker University of California Berkeley Data-Oriented Network Architecture 

Tim Griffin Cambridge University Metarouting

Dina Katabi Massachusetts Institute of Technology Staying Connected in a Connected World 

Nick Feamster Georgia Tech Cabo: Concurrent Architectures are Better than One

Hui Zhang Carnegie Mellon University A Clean Slate 4D Approach to Network Control and Management

David Ward Cisco Next Generation Network Architectures Summary

Will Eatherton Cisco Electronic Packet Switching

Jon Turner Washington University in St. Louis Design Issues for High Performance Virtualizable Network Platforms

George Varghese University of California San Diego Flexible Routers

Tim Sherwood University of California Santa Barbara Open Problems for Open Routers

我们再来看看Cisco Research Center正在发起的RFP(Request for Proposal). RFP的就是这些研究项目可以被资金支持，研究者们可以写proposal来申请。

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac207/crc/rfp.html

Overview

Cisco Requests For Proposals (RFPs) connect Cisco engineers to other researchers and educators to facilitate collaboration and research opportunities. RFPs give academic researchers a way to identify and submit proposals on pressing issues, topics, and problems in networking science research. The RFP process includes compilation of a public repository of current issues and problems along with submission instructions, guidelines, and time frames. Cisco provides funding in the form of grants and contracts; the exact form of funding depends on the project. Awards are made to institutions, not to individual persons.

RFP-2007-022 Distributed Policy Execution

RFP-2007-021 Development of Routing and Addressing Architectures for the Internet

RFP-2007-020 Protocol Oblivious (Behavioral) Internet Traffic Classification

RFP-2007-019 Methods for Developing Efficient Multicore Algorithms

RFP-2007-018 Parallel XML Document Parsing with Multi-core Processors

RFP-2007-017 Integrating SCTP into Java

RFP-2007-015 Service Creation and Enhancement

RFP-2007-014 Multi-core Modeling and Memory Optimization with Disparate Operating Systems

RFP-2007-012 Improvement of Source Code Analysis Metrics

RFP-2007-011 Automation of Source Code Analysis

RFP-2007-010 Adaptive Error Measurement, Concealment, and Repair for IP Streaming Video

RFP-2007-009 Application Flow Management and Service Assurance

RFP-2007-008 Communication Enhancements to OpenOffice

RFP-2007-007 Classification of Bloom Filter variants, and their suitability

to various application domains

RFP-2007-006 Classification of Distributed Hash Table methods, and their suitability to various application domains

RFP-2007-005 Reputation Services for Spam Classification

RFP-2007-004 Development of Naming and Addressing techniques for traversal of NATs and Firewalls

写到这里，笔者想请问一下读者。华为与Cisco是竞争对手嘛？是在同一个层次上博弈嘛？