The overall layout design of the national integrated big data center system has been completed, and the "East Number and West Calculation" project has been officially launched.


Accelerate the creation of a national computing power "one network" (scientific and technological point of view)

　　Recently, four departments including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Central Internet Information Office jointly issued a notice agreeing to start the construction of national computing power hubs in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Chengdu-Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu, Ningxia and other places. node, and planned 10 national data center clusters.

So far, the overall layout design of the national integrated big data center system has been completed, and the "East and West" project has been officially launched.

　　The "number" in the "East Number and West Calculation" project refers to data; "calculation" refers to computing power, that is, the ability to process data.

Similar to projects such as "West-East Gas Transmission", "West-East Electricity Transmission", and "South-to-North Water Diversion", as a national-level strategic project for cross-domain allocation of computing resources, the "East Digital and Western Computing" project is very important for optimizing the spatial distribution of computing resources in my country. It is of great significance to speed up the building of a “one network” of computing power across the country and to build new advantages for the development of my country’s digital economy.

　　How will the "East and West Count" project be promoted and what changes will it bring?

　　Dispatch the optimal computing resources in the west to serve the computing needs of the east, reduce power consumption and computing costs, and promote economic development in the west

　　In Gui'an New District, Guizhou, with an average annual temperature of 15 degrees Celsius, is located Huawei's largest cloud data center in the world.

The cold air is sent into the computer room through the building's shutters, and the hot air is discharged from the roof through the hot aisle, allowing the server to cool naturally; the special cooling liquid forms a circulation on the main components of the server to speed up the heat dissipation; artificial intelligence and big data analysis technology are used for peak shaving Pinggu, to balance the server load; replace copper devices with power semiconductors to improve the efficiency of the entire power supply chain...

　　At present, the power usage efficiency (PUE) of Huawei Cloud Gui'an data center is only 1.12. Compared with the current national standard of 1.35, under full load operation, this data center can save 1.01 billion kWh of electricity every year and reduce carbon emissions. Emission of 810,000 tons, equivalent to planting 35.67 million trees.

The big data, cloud rendering, disaster recovery and backup services it carries cover a wide range of places such as Chongqing, Guangxi, Guangdong, Yunnan, and Sichuan.

In the future, it is expected to reach a scale of 1 million servers.

　　Not just in Gui'an New District.

In recent years, many digital economy enterprises have effectively reduced operating costs by deploying data centers in the western region or purchasing data center cloud services in the western region. While easing the pressure in the eastern region, they have also driven industrial transformation and employment growth in the western region.

From Helinger in Inner Mongolia to Qingyang in Gansu, from Zhongwei in Ningxia to Liangjiang New District in Chongqing, many places have witnessed or are witnessing changes brought about by data and computing power.

　　With the vigorous development of my country's digital economy, the demand for data resource storage, computing and application has increased significantly, and indicators such as energy consumption and carbon emissions have also increased rapidly.

According to the calculation of Wang Endong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the total power of newly installed servers in my country has increased from 690,000 kilowatts in 2012 to 5.62 million kilowatts in 2020, an increase of more than 8 times; the power consumption of data centers has also increased from 2012. 64.5 billion kWh increased to 204.5 billion kWh in 2020, accounting for 2.7% of the total electricity consumption of the whole society.

It can be said that the data center is a "steel factory without smoke".

　　From the perspective of geographical distribution, the eastern region has a large computing demand, but the energy consumption index is tight and the cost of electricity is high; some western regions are rich in energy and have a suitable climate, but there are bottlenecks such as small network bandwidth and high cost of inter-provincial data transmission, which cannot effectively meet the needs of the eastern region. It is urgent to plan and deploy the computing power network at the national level.

　　"The 'East Number and West Calculation' project is a national project initiated by my country from various aspects such as national strategy, technological development, and energy policy. It serves the computing needs of the east by dispatching the optimal computing resources in the west, reducing power consumption and energy consumption. Calculate the cost and drive the economic development of the west." Zhang Yunquan, a researcher at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, introduced.

　　The relevant person in charge of ZTE believes that the implementation of the "East and West" project is conducive to the large-scale and intensive development of national computing power, and is also expected to greatly increase the proportion of green energy use.

"At the same time, by increasing the construction of computing power infrastructure in the west and the rational flow of data from the east to the west, it will drive the transfer of related industries, expand the development space in the east, improve the level of network infrastructure construction in the west, and promote the formation of a balanced development system. pattern."

　　Realize resource coordination in network, computing power scheduling, industrial chain, data element governance, etc., and strengthen cross-domain coordinated development of east and west

　　According to the layout of the national integrated big data center system, 8 national computing power hub nodes will serve as the backbone connection points of my country's computing power network, develop data center clusters, and carry out collaborative construction between data centers and networks, cloud computing, and big data. And as the strategic fulcrum of the national "East and West" project, it promotes the orderly transfer of computing resources to the west, and promotes the solution of the imbalance between the supply and demand of computing power in the east and the west.

The interviewed experts pointed out that the in-depth promotion of the "East Digital and Western Computing" project is not a simple accumulation of computing power, but to realize the coordination of resources in various aspects such as network, computing power scheduling, industrial chain, and data element governance, and strengthen the cross-domain between east and west. Coordinate development.

　　"The computing power network is the main artery of the network that supports the 'East and West' project. Without this data transmission base, it is difficult to complete the calculation and return transmission of the 'number' of 'East and West'." The relevant person in charge of Huawei According to the introduction, the computing power network needs to take advantage of certainty, security and other advantages, such as using the existing all-optical transmission network to carry data transmission, so as to further improve the efficiency.

The relevant person in charge of ZTE believes that the current transmission network needs to be further optimized and adjusted based on the layout of the national computing power hub nodes based on the "East Digital and Western Calculation" project. Exchange in real time.

　　Computing power scheduling not only ensures the convenience of computing power, but also supports the automation and intelligence of resource allocation.

"'East number and western calculation' does not mean that 'East number' is completely 'Western calculation', but to follow the principle of moderate aggregation and intensive development." The relevant person in charge of Baidu gave an example, the eastern hub node will undertake remote real-time medical treatment, disaster Businesses with high network delay requirements such as early warning; the western hub can undertake non-real-time computing power requirements such as background processing, offline analysis, and storage backup.

　　"This can not only alleviate the shortage of computing power in the east in the short term, but also leave a buffer period for the construction and service improvement of computing power in the west." The relevant person in charge of Baidu said that in the long run, the key to areas with weak computing power development is It is necessary to improve infrastructure and strengthen network construction; at the same time, relevant support policies can be introduced to encourage the participation of technology enterprises and coordinated development.

　　The industrial chain of the "East and West" project is long and covers a wide range of categories.

In Zhang Yunquan's view, the "East and West Calculation" project should also drive the upstream and downstream collaborative innovation of the industrial chain, especially to strengthen the research and development support and large-scale application promotion of key software and hardware products of big data, constantly improve the industrial ecosystem, and enhance big data. Innovation capability of the whole industry chain.

Especially for the computing power service industry, it will be beneficial to the formation of a new industrial chain of computing power economy in my country.

Peng Zhen, President of Inspur Information, said: "In addition to paying attention to computing power and data, we must also pay special attention to algorithms. If we grasp algorithms, we will have a grasp on innovation."

　　The relevant person in charge of ZTE said that in the implementation of the "East and West" project, attention should also be paid to the improvement of the security governance structure and mechanism.

"Data resources are an important factor of production. In the process of transaction circulation and cross-border transmission, it is necessary to prevent the risk of data leakage, and pay attention to privacy protection, security mechanism, and specification formulation. This is an important link in the formation of a super-large data factor market in the future. Therefore, 'East Digital' The Western Computing' project is committed to creating an integrated governance solution for data security and data elements."

　　Converting computing power into a convenient and easy-to-use infrastructure can provide a wide range of services for the transformation of my country's digital society

　　Computing power represents the ability to process data, is a measure of the sustainable development of digital technology, and is also the core productivity of the digital economy era.

Up to now, the scale of data centers in my country has reached 5 million standard racks, and the computing power has reached 130EFLOPS (1300 billion floating point operations per second).

With the continuous penetration of digital technology into all fields of the economy and society, the demand for computing power in the whole society is still very urgent, and it is expected that it will continue to grow rapidly at a rate of more than 20% every year.

　　"Production tools have developed into intelligent devices driven by computing power, including running various algorithms and models. The development of tools is changing with each passing day, and their capabilities are increasing exponentially; data has become a new factor of production, and labor objects have expanded from the physical world to digital. The world." Wang Endong said, "Under the action of computing power, productivity has been unleashed unprecedentedly. It can be seen from government plans and institutional reports in recent years that computing power is increasingly valued as a productivity."

　　The global digital transformation has entered a stage of rapid development, and the proportion of digital economy in various countries continues to increase.

Recently, the "2021-2022 Global Computing Power Index Evaluation Report" jointly compiled by International Data Corporation, Inspur Information, and Tsinghua University Global Industry Research Institute shows that increasing investment in computing power in a country or region can bring economic growth, and This growth has long-term and multiplier effects.

For every 1 point increase in the computing power index, the digital economy and GDP will increase by 3.5‰ and 1.8‰ respectively.

　　Peng Zhen believes that as a new productive force in the digital economy era, computing power infrastructure has become a consensus.

By transforming computing power into a convenient and easy-to-use infrastructure, the "East Data and Western Calculation" project can provide a wide range of services for the transformation of my country's digital society and accelerate the proportion of my country's digital economy in the national economy.

　　"With the implementation of the 'East Number and West Calculation' project, there may be a 'computing power socket' similar to an electrical socket in the future. Users only need to pay like buying electricity, and they can buy ubiquitous and easy-to-use computing power. Services; With the continuous growth of computing power demand and the maturity of technology, there may be a 'computing power factory' similar to a power plant and a 'computing network' similar to a power grid in the future. Users can purchase computing power service packages just like purchasing data packages. "Zhang Yunquan also pointed out that how to conduct national integrated scheduling of computing power, how to evaluate computing power, and how to determine the price of computing power, etc., will be a series of new topics in the era of computing power economy.

　　Our reporter Gu Yekai Yu Jianbin