(Reporter Ye Jing) Recently, the "Counting East and Counting the West" project was officially launched in an all-round way. The National Development and Reform Commission, the Cyberspace Administration of the Cpc Central Committee, and the Energy Bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology agreed to start the construction of a national hub node for a national integrated computing power network in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the Chengdu-Chongqing region, the Yangtze River Delta region, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. Previously, Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia and other 4 have been approved for construction, so far, 8 national integrated computing network national hub nodes have all been approved.
Computing power is the core of cloud computing, with the growing demand for computing power in the cloud computing market, as well as the commercial landing of 5G, solving computing power and responding to new scenarios have become a new focus. It is foreseeable that in 2022, the computing power network will be further concerned. So, for operators, why do they want to do a computing power network, and how to achieve a computing power network?
Computing power network to meet the "golden period" of development
It is reported that the 8 hub nodes approved for construction will serve as the backbone connection point of the mainland computing power network, coordinate the planning of data center construction layout, develop data center clusters, carry out collaborative construction between data centers and networks, cloud computing, and big data, and serve as the strategic fulcrum of the national "East And West Computing" project, promote the orderly transfer of computing power resources to the west, and promote the solution of the imbalance between supply and demand of computing power in the east and west. The industry believes that the "computing power network" will become a new track for information technology innovation.
In fact, in recent years, the development of computing power in the mainland has made rapid progress, including smart cities, Internet of Things, intelligent driving, AR/VR, etc., and data includes text, voice, pictures, videos and other forms. According to IDC forecasts, by 2023, the digital economy output will account for 67% of China's GDP, and the global data volume is expected to reach 175 ZB in 2025. These will drive the dense distribution of computing power of the whole network, rapid sinking and gradually realize networking services.
Operators have different emphases on the layout of computing power industries
Computing power network is the deepening and new upgrade of cloud-network integration, so it is a natural demand derived from operators after developing cloud network strategy in recent years.
The three major operators are actively expanding their hashrate networks.
On June 30, 2021, China Telecom will put into operation the largest green intelligent computing power center in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, located in Wuqing District, Tianjin. The overall idea of China Telecom's computing network is to further combine multi-level computing nodes such as edge computing and cloud computing with the network to achieve resource supply under the integration of cloud and network, and provide users with optimal services and operational guarantees.
On November 2, 2021, China Mobile also released the "White Paper on Computing Power Networks", and the computing power network, together with 5G networks and smart middle offices, constitutes China Mobile's new generation of information service system, realizing "the network is in the calculation, the network is in the network".
On December 6, 2021, at the China Unicom Partner Conference, the "China Unicom Computing Power Network White Paper" followed, clarifying the route of China Unicom's evolution to the computing power network. Put forward the "pole, soft, intelligent, simple" computing power network.
Industry experts pointed out that the three major operators have their own advantages and disadvantages in the field of computing power, and the most critical and important capability is product packaging, that is, to achieve the matching of cloud computing power and network terminal transmission, only such a combination can play a huge value.
The trend of computing power networks is rising and going far
The official launch of the "East Counting West Computing" project has pressed the "fast-forward button" for the development of the computing power network, which not only contains a strong computing power infrastructure, but also is inseparable from a network base with large bandwidth, low latency, high reliability and easy scheduling. As the main bearer of the information revolution, fiber optic networks will continue to play an important role in the foreseeable future. Therefore, continuing to deepen the construction of an all-optical base may make the construction of the computing power network more effective with half the effort, and then help operators seize this important opportunity.
Of course, moving from "cloud-network integration" to "computing power network" is a challenging thing for operators. There are challenges in key technologies, industrial chain integrity, and business models. It is foreseeable that operators will face the reconstruction of the underlying hardware and software, to the reconstruction of the capability module, to the re-construction of the industrial ecology.