New AI Cluster Networking Architecture “ZCube” Selected for the 2026 WAIC SAIL Award TOP30
On June 17, the 30-day countdown launch event for the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance was held in Shanghai.
At the event, the TOP30 list for the SAIL Award, WAIC's highest honor, was unveiled. “New AI Cluster Networking Architecture ZCube and Its Industry Applications” stood out from 230 leading global projects to enter this authoritative list, often called the “Oscars” of the AI world.
About the SAIL Award: A Benchmark of AI Industry Excellence
Since its creation in 2018, the SAIL Award has been WAIC's highest honor. Its name comes from four core evaluation criteria: S for Superior, A for Applicative, I for Innovative, and L for Leading.
Together, these dimensions seek to discover and recognize highly regarded AI projects that contribute to human well-being.
This year's conference received 230 valid submissions, 14.3% from overseas. They covered agents, embodied AI, computing chips, industry, healthcare, finance, and other commercial fields.
Previous winners and finalists include Amazon AWS, Huawei Kirin chips, IBM Project Debater, and the University of Liverpool's Robot Scientist, among other leading international organizations and companies.
The selected ZCube project was jointly submitted by the State Key Laboratory of Internet Architecture (互联网体系结构全国重点实验室), Shanghai Yuxun Network Technology Co., Ltd. (上海驭驯网络科技有限公司), and Shanghai ADC Technology Services Co., Ltd. (上海埃迪希科技服务有限公司). It includes the following key technologies.
1. ZCube interconnect structure. It uses a fully flat networking design, with GPU servers accessing the network through a hybrid of single-rail and multi-rail mechanisms.
2. ZCube routing system. It uses two-hop flat routing between GPUs across the fabric to eliminate congestion caused by traffic collisions and contention at the root.
3. ZCube deployment toolchain. Independently developed tools for ZCube network-cabling correctness diagnostics and automated configuration substantially shorten deployment time.
As a next-generation flat AI-cluster networking architecture that disrupts conventional designs, ZCube has six structural advantages: lower networking cost, fewer failure sources, shorter GPU-to-GPU paths, stronger load balancing, smaller failure domains, and better multi-tenant isolation. It has been deployed and is running reliably across multiple GPU types and 1,000-GPU-scale clusters.
With its core portfolio of ZCube switches, the ZCube Controller, ZCube networking-service toolchains, the YCOS AI-network tuning system, and the XOPS AI-network operations system, Harnets.AI provides full-lifecycle AI-network services. It advances compute infrastructure toward higher efficiency, lower cost, greater determinism, and higher stability, while working with ecosystem partners to build the next-generation AI-network foundation and maximize the value of every GPU.