Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Central Cyberspace Administration, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the National Energy Administration jointly issued a notice agreeing to start the construction of national computing power hub nodes in 8 places, including Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Chengdu-Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu, and Ningxia, and planning 10 national data center clusters. At this point, the national integrated big data center system has completed the overall layout design, and the "East Number West Calculation" project has been officially launched.
What is "Counting East and Counting West"? Why should the number of east be counted in the west?
"Number" refers to data, and "calculation" is computing power, that is, the ability to process data. "East Number West Computing" is to build a new computing power network system integrating data centers, cloud computing and big data, to guide the eastern computing power demand to the west in an orderly manner, optimize the layout of data center construction, and promote the coordinated linkage between the east and the west.
Up to now, the size of the mainland data center has reached 5 million standard racks, and the computing power has reached 130EFLOPS (130 billion billion floating-point operations per second). With the comprehensive and continuous penetration of digital technology into all fields of economy and society, the demand for computing power in the whole society is still very urgent, and it is expected to continue to grow rapidly at a rate of more than 20% per year.
At present, most of the mainland data centers are distributed in the eastern region, and due to the increasing shortage of land, energy and other resources, it is difficult to sustain the large-scale development of data centers in the east. The western part of the mainland is rich in resources, especially renewable energy, and has the potential to develop data centers and undertake the demand for computing power in the east. Sun Wei, deputy director of the High Technology Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, introduced it.
"Like the 'south-to-north water diversion' and 'west-to-east power transmission,' we should give full play to the advantages of the mainland's institutional mechanisms, integrate the layout from a national perspective, optimize the allocation of resources, and improve the efficiency of resource use." He said.
What is the meaning of "counting east and counting west"?
Computing power, like water conservancy in the agricultural era and electricity in the industrial age, has become the core productive force of the development of the digital economy and an important infrastructure for the development of the national economy. The implementation of the "East Counting West Calculation" project to promote the rational layout of data centers, balance between supply and demand, green intensification and interconnection will enhance the overall level of national computing power, promote green development, expand effective investment, and promote coordinated regional development.
Sun Wei said that the implementation of the "East Number West Calculation" project to promote the rational layout of data centers, optimize supply and demand, green intensification and interconnection, has many significance: first, it is conducive to improving the overall computing power level of the country; second, it is conducive to promoting green development; third, it is conducive to expanding effective investment, the data center industry chain is long, the investment scale is large, and the driving effect is strong; fourth, it is conducive to promoting coordinated regional development.
For enterprises that provide computing power, the advantages of "East Counting and West Computing" are reflected in accelerating the realization of cloud-network collaboration, improving the quality of computing power services, reducing the cost of networks, electricity and other costs, planning computing resources more targeted, and improving resource use efficiency.
For enterprises that use computing power, on the one hand, "East Counting West Computing" helps enterprises to enjoy more convenient and easy-to-use computing power services, on the other hand, it can further reduce the cost of cloud usage and accelerate the digital transformation of enterprises.
The person in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission said that the next step is to further increase the overall planning efforts, give play to the policy superposition effect, integrate to promote the optimization of the layout of computing power and the reform and innovation of institutional mechanisms, accelerate the improvement of the influence and agglomeration of the 8 major computing power hubs, and drive the coordinated development of the national computing power integration.
What is the progress of operators' "East Counting West Counting"?
Some authoritative institutions and experts estimate that the annual investment volume of the "East Number West Calculation" project will reach hundreds of billions of yuan, and the pulling effect on related industries will reach 1:8. This also means that the project will greatly exceed the "West-to-East Gas Transmission" and "South-to-North Water Diversion Project".
In addition to telecom operators, Huawei, 21Vianet, Baidu and other leading enterprises are also actively participating in the "East Counting West" project. Among them, how is the progress of operators?
As we all know, on May 24, 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Central Cyberspace Administration, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the National Energy Administration jointly issued the "Implementation Plan for the Computing Power Hub of the National Integrated Big Data Center Collaborative Innovation System" (No. 709 [2021] of the National Integrated Big Data Center), proposing to accelerate the implementation of the "East Number West Calculation" project and improve the level of cross-regional computing power scheduling. The operator's "East Counting West" layout has then been put on the agenda.
On August 20, 2021, China Telecom's National Integrated Big Data Center (Ningxia Zhongwei) node was officially unveiled. Liu Guiqing, deputy general manager of China Telecom, said that China Telecom gave full play to its cloud network advantages, actively implemented the national strategy, continued to promote the "East Number West Calculation" project, and helped the construction of the national integrated big data center innovation and coordination system.
On November 7, 2021, the second World Digital Economy Forum was held in Beijing, and Li Zhengmao, general manager of China Telecom, made a speech entitled "Accelerating the Construction of An Intelligent and Comprehensive Digital Information Infrastructure and Opening Up the Information "Artery" of Economic and Social Development", sharing his knowledge and understanding of the digital economy, as well as the exploration and practice of China Telecom. He pointed out that the average growth of the scale of computing power by 1% will leverage the growth of digital economy by 0.4% and GDP growth by 0.2%; for every 1 yuan invested in the computing power industry, economic output will be driven by 3 to 4 yuan.
At the 2021 Global Partner Conference, China Mobile established the Computing Power Network Industry Alliance and released the "China Mobile Computing Power Network White Paper"; Liu Liehong, Chairman of China Unicom, said at the 2021 China 5G+ Industrial Internet Conference that China Unicom actively implements the strategic requirements of "East Number West Computing" and "Double Carbon", carries out a new data center layout of "5+4+31+X", and creates a cloud-network integration capability of "one network connection, multiple clouds, one-click network cloud adjustment".
Major historical moments, major historical opportunities, operators are fierce.