Nowadays, digital technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual reality are accelerating their integration with life scenarios, and new needs and new models are emerging. While providing convenience for consumers, digital technology has also generated a large number of data and computing, transmission and processing needs.
Not long ago, the State Council issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy", pointing out that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, China's digital economy will shift to a new stage of deepening application, standardized development, and inclusive sharing, and proposing to "lay out the national hub node of the national integrated computing power network in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Chengdu-Chongqing Region, Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia and other regions" and "accelerate the implementation of the 'East Number West Calculation' project".
How will the "Counting East and Counting the West" work? What changes will it bring to the regional economy?
Promote the complementarity of resource advantages
Compared with the "South-to-North Water Diversion", "West-to-East Gas Transmission" and "West-to-East Electricity Transmission", people are still a little unfamiliar with "counting the east and counting the west".
According to industry insiders, the so-called "east number west calculation" refers to the construction of a new type of computing power network system, the eastern computing power demand and a large number of production and living data are transported to the western region for storage, calculation and feedback, and the establishment of a national computing power hub node in the western region, which helps to improve the unbalanced layout of digital infrastructure and maximize the value of data elements.
Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments issued a notice agreeing to start the construction of national computing power hub nodes in Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu, Ningxia and other places. This means that the "East Counting West" project has been launched.
Jin Xiandong, spokesman for the National Development and Reform Commission, said that in recent years, with the acceleration of digital transformation and upgrading in various industries, the total amount of data in the whole society has exploded, and the demand for data storage, computing, transmission, and application has increased significantly.
"The rapid development of data center scale has put forward higher requirements for energy, land, climate and other conditions. Some eastern regions have great demand for applications, but the energy consumption indicators are tight, the cost of electricity is high, and the difficulty and limitations of large-scale development of data centers are large. Some western regions are rich in renewable energy and have a suitable climate, but there are bottlenecks of small network bandwidth and high inter-provincial data transmission costs, which cannot effectively undertake the demand in the eastern region. Therefore, it is urgent to increase the top-level design of the national computing power network, change the network-centered development model as soon as possible, and reconstruct the network pattern around the data center. Kim Hyun-dong said.
This layout has been highly recognized by many parties. Zheng Weimin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University, said that the "East Counting West" project can make full use of the vast space resources, natural resources and power resources in western China to enhance cross-regional collaborative research and development and application capabilities. "Supercomputing systems are becoming more and more important to the development of the national economy, such as applied to earthquake simulation, atmospheric simulation and quantum simulation. The computer machines in the western regions of Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and other western regions are connected by optical fiber cables and the relevant data is calculated, which can realize the overall utilization of resources. Zheng Weimin said.
"'Counting the East and Counting the West' can make full use of the abundant renewable energy and available wasteland in the western region while solving the problems of tight energy consumption indicators, high power costs, and limited space for large-scale data center development in the eastern region." In addition, the 'East Counting West' can drive the vast western region to participate in the wave of intelligently guided digital economy, better release the 'latecomer advantage', and achieve rapid development. Liu Miao, general manager of the service program business of Lenovo Enterprise Technology Group, told this reporter.
There is more room for green development
The reporter found in the interview that many enterprises have begun to lay out in the field of "East Number West Calculation", and the advantages of "East Number West Calculation" are gradually emerging.
"Counting the East and counting the West" is conducive to reducing costs, energy conservation and emission reduction.
Wulanchabu City, Inner Mongolia is an important renewable energy development area in China, with titles such as "Grassland Cloud Valley" and "Summer Capital of China's Grassland". In August 2020, Alibaba Cloud officially provided cloud computing services to the outside world in the super data center laid out here. It is understood that the data center uses a lot of clean energy such as wind power and photovoltaics. Meanwhile, the average annual temperature in Ulanqab is only 4.3 degrees Celsius. This means that data centers have nearly 10 months a year to take advantage of the natural environment for cooling.
Also in this layout is Huawei. The person in charge of HUAWEI CLOUD's strategy and planning business told this reporter that HUAWEI CLOUD's data center in Wulanchabu can be used as an incubation base for innovative solutions such as big data, warm and cold storage, and video transcoding, to improve the computing network capabilities of core sites and provide customers with better data services.
"The data center is a place with high power consumption, the climate in the western part of the mainland is relatively suitable, the energy is rich and cheap, and it can meet the needs of green and high-quality development of the data center." At present, we have formed two major cloud data centers in guizhou guian - inner mongolia wulanchabu, one south and one north. The person in charge said that the HUAWEI CLOUD Gui'an data center combines the natural environment of Guizhou and adopts technologies such as AHU direct ventilation and liquid cooling to balance the load of each server and improve the efficiency ratio of resource use. At full capacity, the data center energy efficiency indicator PUE can be as low as 1.12, which is expected to save 1.01 billion kWh of electricity and reduce carbon emissions by 810,000 tons per year.
"Counting east and counting west" will also bring more opportunities for the development of the digital economy.
The reporter learned from Beijing Volcano Engine Technology Co., Ltd. that the company has deployed a large number of content distribution network (CDN) nodes across the country in recent years. At present, the company is strengthening the training and recruitment of talents in the western data center, and continues to promote the construction of the upstream and downstream industrial chain of the western data center.
"In terms of industrial digitalization, 'East Digital West Computing' helps us better provide cloud storage, cloud computing, data tools, research and development platforms, AI technology and other services to help more traditional enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises digitally transform; in terms of digital industrialization, we will further carry out key core technology innovation with the help of strong digital infrastructure, and actively explore new products, new models and new formats for technology output." The relevant person in charge of the company said.
Optimize the regional economic pattern
In the "East Counting West Counting" project, what is the relationship between "number" and "calculation"?
Wang Qing, deputy chief engineer of the Institute of Industry and Planning of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, pointed out in an interview with this reporter that computing facilities are the base for the healthy development of the digital economy and play a huge role in promoting the healthy development of the digital economy. According to estimates, the hashrate index will increase by an average of 1 percentage point, and the digital economy and GDP will grow by 0.33% and 0.18% respectively.
In recent years, China's digital economy has developed rapidly, accumulating a large number of valuable data resources. However, there is still a gap between the development of computing power facilities and the world-class level, and the level of computing power is currently difficult to meet the huge computing demand brought about by the surge in data volume. "One of the big reasons for this is the imbalance between supply and demand in the data centers that carry the hash rate." Under the background of "East And West Counting", a large number of digital economy enterprises engaged in high-latency services such as data storage and offline data analysis can realize remote computing and storage resource scheduling by purchasing cloud services in the western region, effectively reducing operating costs and additional profits. At the same time, the upstream and downstream computing power industrial chain attracted by the data center has placed the important output value of the industrial chain in the western region, which is also of great significance for the economic transformation and upgrading of the western region. Wang Qing said.
However, Wang Qing reminded that in the process of data and information transmission, physical facilities, network security, application security, data security and information security may face multiple risks. Therefore, it is necessary to reasonably plan the security areas of the network and the access rights between different areas, establish highly reliable network facilities, and do a good job of network security posture monitoring.
At present, Lenovo has initially completed the layout of green data center resources in ningxia, Gansu, Inner Mongolia and other western regions. We are also actively deploying in hot cities such as Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, cutting into the fields of edge computing, cross-border finance, and artificial intelligence. Liu Miao said that in the future, Lenovo will actively participate in the "East Counting West Calculation" from multiple dimensions such as computing power resource services, data circulation integration, and data security protection.
The technical leader of Huawei's optical product line said that the current computing network application scenarios are mainly related to the digital transformation of the government, state-owned enterprises and industries, and there are high requirements for the security, reliability, and certain experience of computing power and networks. In the future, it will be carried out and upgraded for different requirements such as latency, bandwidth, and security isolation. The person in charge revealed that the company will try to "all-optical transmission network" to carry the data transmission of "east number west calculation" to further improve security and efficiency.
The "Counting In the East and Counting the West" project has attracted investment enthusiasm from many places in the west. Huang Hao, a researcher at the Institute of Financial and Economic Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told this reporter that speeding up the implementation of the "Eastern Numbers and Western Calculations" project and cultivating new growth points for future industries in the western region is conducive to giving play to the advantages of resource endowments in various places nationwide. However, in this process, in terms of what to invest, how much to invest, and how to invest, we should pay attention to market orientation and demand orientation, and avoid ineffective investment while quickly forming cross-regional data interaction capabilities.