Source: Fresh Dates Classroom (xzclasscom)
Author: Xiao Zaojun
Internet of Things Think Tank reprinted
Guide
The National Development and Reform Commission once again issued a notice in conjunction with a number of departments, agreeing to start the construction of national computing power hub nodes in 8 places, including Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, and planning 10 national data center clusters. This marks that the "national integrated big data center system" has completed the overall layout design, and the "East Number West Calculation" project has officially started.
In the past two days, there has been more news about "counting the east and counting the west", which has aroused widespread concern inside and outside the industry.
In fact, in the middle of last year, Xiao Zaojun sent an article on "counting the east and counting the west" (link: the west will build a national computing hub node, how to transport the "east counting the west"? ）。
At that time (May 24, 2021), the National Development and Reform Commission and a number of departments jointly issued a document entitled "Implementation Plan for the Computing Power Hub of the National Integrated Big Data Center Collaborative Innovation System" (Development and Reform High Technology [2021] No. 709). In the document, it is clearly proposed to build a national hub node of a national integrated computing power network and develop data center clusters.
Two days later (May 26), at the opening ceremony of the Guiyang 2021 Digital Expo, the official announcement of the national hub node project of the national integrated computing power network was launched, thus pushing the "East Number West Calculation" to the public's vision.
Today, the National Development and Reform Commission has once again issued a notice in conjunction with a number of departments, agreeing to start the construction of national computing power hub nodes in 8 places, including Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, and planning 10 national data center clusters.
This marks that the "national integrated big data center system" has completed the overall layout design, and the "East Number West Calculation" project has officially started.
In today's article, Xiao Zaojun will interpret the key content of "East Counting west counting" from a personal perspective, supplement some information that is easy to be ignored, and help everyone more fully understand the details of this national digital infrastructure project.
█ What is "Counting East and Counting West"
"Number" is data, "count" is hash rate.
Regarding the computing power, in recent years, Xiao Zaojun has not shouted less, and everyone should be familiar with it, that is, the ability to process data.
"Counting the East and counting the West", in short, is to build a data center and put the data and needs generated by economic activities in the eastern region to the western region to calculate and process.
Today, we are in the digital age, and we cannot do without the support of digital technology. The main forms of support for digital technology are connectivity (communication) and computing power (IT).
Connectivity, including communication technologies represented by 4G/5G and optical broadband. Computing power, divided into hardware and software, is more familiar to everyone, including CPU, memory, hard disk, operating system, database, application software and so on.
Over the years, with the rapid penetration of digital technologies into various industries, the importance of connectivity and computing power has increased, becoming a representative of advanced productivity.
Without them, the digital transformation that our country is actively promoting now would not have been successful. And the development of the digital economy that we have high hopes for will also lose its source of power.
If you want to get the surging power, you must build a large number of connection and computing power infrastructure.
The 5G and gigabit cities we are desperately building now belong to the basic implementation of the connection force. And computing power infrastructure, as we all know, mainly refers to data centers (IDCs).
Data Center (IDC)
In the "new infrastructure" strategy proposed by the state in early 2020, the data center was clearly listed as one of the seven major construction areas.
The national "14th Five-Year Plan" is very clear: it is necessary to "accelerate the construction of a national integrated big data center system, strengthen the overall intelligent scheduling of computing power, build a number of national hub nodes and big data center clusters, and build E-level and 10E supercomputing centers." ”
According to forecasts, domestic demand for computing power will grow at a rate of 20% per year. It is urgent to vigorously promote the construction of computing power infrastructure.
█ Planning characteristics of "counting the east and counting the west"
According to the specific plan of the "East Counting West Calculation" project, the state will 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 build 10 national data center clusters in Zhangjiakou, Wuhu, Shaoguan and other places.
The 8 hub nodes, which are actually "4+4" structures, are divided into two categories, with different positioning, different roles and requirements.
The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta region, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and the Chengdu-Chongqing region belong to the first category. These areas are the core areas of our country's economic development and important urban agglomerations. In particular, the first three are themselves in the economically developed areas of the eastern coast.
These areas have a large user scale and strong application demand. After the completion of the hub node, basically serve the needs of the region, belongs to the "internal digestion".
Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu, Ningxia, are in the western region, the local demand for computing power is not large, they as a hub node, the main role is to "export computing power to the outside world".
In other words, they can rely on their low land cost, abundant renewable energy (wind power, hydropower), and suitable climate (low temperature in the north) to build low-cost, low-energy data centers to undertake the computing power demand in the eastern region.
In addition to the cost difference, the main difference between the east and west hub nodes is the difference in "tasks".
Students who are engaged in communication know that the communication delay caused by physical distance is inevitable. The biggest problem with the hash rate of the western data center delivering hash rate to the east is the delay.
Therefore, network applications that are very sensitive to latency, such as autonomous driving (Internet of Vehicles), industrial manufacturing (robotics), telemedicine, financial securities, and disaster early warning, will definitely be completed in the data center nearest to the location or the location.
The western data center will undertake more network applications that are not sensitive to latency, such as background processing, offline analysis, and cold data storage backup.
What is "cold data"? Data that is accessed less frequently is cold data. Correspondingly, the highest frequency of access is "hot data". Not high or low, is the "temperature data".
Data stores have the characteristics of variation from hot to cold. The vast majority of data will become "cold data" within 6 months of generation. Cold data accounts for 80% of the total amount of data, and the proportion of storage resources is very high.
█ The development background of "Counting East and Counting West"
"Counting the East and counting the West", on the surface, is to promote the construction of data centers. But Xiao Zaojun personally believes that the more important significance is to promote the orderly construction of data centers.
That is to say, the focus is on policy guidance and macro layout, not simply pursuing an increase in quantity, but strictly controlling the healthy and reasonable growth process.
In recent years, domestic data centers have grown rapidly. At present, the scale of domestic data centers has reached 5 million standard racks, with more than 2 million in operation, and the computing power is 130EFLOPS (130 billion billion floating-point operations per second). The number of new cabinets added in China every year exceeds 300,000.
Driven by cloud computing and big data, the enthusiasm for building data centers in various places is too high, and even a little fanatical.
Regions, regardless of their geographic location or not, and whether they have sufficient economic and technical strength, are building data centers. Some data centers, with backward functions, low utilization rates, and high energy consumption, basically do not play a role, and are even in a state of loss and burning money.
Here, just to popularize two important indicators related to data centers.
The first is the listing rate.
Rack rate = number of servers that have been put on the shelf / number of servers that can be accommodated in the rack, the higher the indicator, the higher the data center utilization.
Another metric is PUE, or Power Usage Effectiveness, power usage efficiency.
PUE = total data center energy consumption / IT equipment energy consumption. Among them, the total energy consumption of the data center, including the energy consumption of IT equipment, as well as the energy consumption of other systems such as refrigeration and distribution.
The value of puE is definitely greater than 1, and the closer it is to 1, the less energy is consumed by non-IT equipment in that data center, that is, the higher the level of energy efficiency.
According to the document requirements of "Counting East and Counting West", the PUE index of the cluster data center in the eastern region must be controlled within 1.25 and within 1.2 in the western region, and the average listing rate is not less than 65%.
This is equivalent to drawing a red line for data center construction. Many of the data centers that have been built may face the fate of shutting down. (Most of the data centers in China, PUE is between 2-3.) ）
For areas outside the core hub node, the document clearly requires: "Local governments shall not give preferential policies in land, finance and taxation", "coordinate the planning and layout of data centers in the province, strengthen the connection with the national hub node, and participate in the cascading scheduling of computing power between the state and the province".
In other words, non-hub nodes can only build small and medium-sized data centers at most, when a supporting role.
Such planning requirements are obviously conducive to the rational layout of the industry and the realization of the national "double carbon" strategic goal.
In 2020, the national data center consumed a total of 204.5 billion kWh of electricity, accounting for 2.7% of the total electricity consumption of the whole society. It is expected that by 2025, this value will reach 395.2 billion kWh, accounting for 4.05%.
At present, China's power structure is still dominated by coal-fired power generation, and thermal power accounts for more than 70% of the power supply structure in data centers, which will produce a large number of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.
Data center electricity costs, accounting for 56.7% of its operating costs. If the electricity bill cannot be controlled, it will also adversely affect the economic efficiency of the data center.
Therefore, the state has engaged in "counting the east and counting the west" and relocating the computing power to the western region with lower energy costs, which can not only improve the overall level of the country's computing power, but also save funds and reduce the impact on the environment.
According to the target, by the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan", the proportion of total data centers in the east will drop from 60% to about 50%. The proportion of western data centers rose from 10% to about 25%.
█ The impact of data centers on the local economy
Just now we stood in the perspective of the country and calculated the "economic account", and the conclusion is obvious.
Next, we look at the micro perspective and see what kind of impact the construction of data centers will have on the local economy in the western region.
Xiao Zaojun personally believes that data centers, as digital infrastructure, mainly contribute to the country's macro development, and for the local area, the benefits are not obvious, at least compared with the "old infrastructure".
During the construction of the data center, it will drive some local employment and the basic civil construction economy. However, that's about it.
Speaking of which, let's briefly talk about the industrial chain of data centers.
The data center industry chain is shown in the figure below, which is mainly divided into upstream equipment, facilities, software and hardware suppliers, midstream IDC builders and service providers, and downstream application users in various industries.
From the perspective of data center hardware composition, it is mainly divided into underlying infrastructure (power supply and distribution system, cooling and cooling system, etc.) and IT and network equipment (servers, storage, digital communication equipment, etc.).
These equipment and facilities will certainly not be manufactured locally.
After the data center is built, only electricity bills and land rental income are left in the local area.
Data centers are now automated operations and maintenance, unlike factories, which require a large number of workers and can drive employment.
The business carried by the data center is the value of the application layer. In the case of Internet companies, the profits they make through data centers will certainly not be taxed locally, but at the headquarters location.
Therefore, the construction of data centers, in addition to some promotional value, will have limited help to the local economy.
█ "Counting East and West Counting" and communication
"Counting east and counting west" is not just a matter in the field of computing power, it is closely related to our communication.
If you want to achieve the smooth flow of computing power, you can't do without the support of the communication network. In other words, there is no developed "transportation capacity", even if the computing power in the western region is strong and cheap, there is no way to send it to the eastern region.
In order to better implement the "east counting west calculation", the state will vigorously invest in the construction of a backbone network between data centers. In particular, the communication infrastructure in the western region will usher in a comprehensive upgrade.
Between the east and the west, a number of "east counting west counting" demonstration lines will be built.
"Counting the east and counting the west" will definitely use an all-optical network.
OTN, ROADM/OXC, SDON, FlexO, optical network automation control and other technologies will play a huge role. The high-speed optical transceiver market such as 400G will also be further stimulated.
For the optical communication industry, "counting the east and counting the west" is definitely a big cake that cannot be missed.
█ Conclusion
Well, the above is some of Xiao Zaojun's interpretation of "counting the east and counting the west".
The construction of data centers is of great help to drive the development of the industry. However, we should also note that some of the software and hardware with higher profit values in data centers are in the hands of foreign enterprises. Many domestic enterprises, although involved, but the profit margin is not so high.
In other words, to build a data center, a lot of money may end up being earned by foreigners. It is still necessary to find ways to improve the profit margins of domestic data center-related enterprises.
In addition, the security of data centers also needs to attract more attention.
Data centers, like power plants and water plants, are important national infrastructures and need to be considered to deal with the threats of war, terrorist attacks, earthquakes, floods, etc. In addition to offline physical threats, cybersecurity attacks from online are more difficult to prevent.
How to establish a more perfect data center security system and emergency plan, and how to improve the attack prevention capability of data centers, are issues worth constantly thinking about and exploring.
Finally, I hope that the "East Counting West" project can be built smoothly, contribute to the development of the national digital economy, and help us win more intense scientific and technological and economic games in the future.
Thank you!
bibliography:
1. "Historical Moments! "Counting the East and Counting the West" National Project Fully Launched", Wisdom East and West;
2. "The "East Counting West Calculation", which is hotly discussed on the whole network, why can it be compared with the South-to-North Water Diversion Project? Suning Institute of Finance
3. Research Report on Data Center Industry Atlas, Academy of Information and Communications Technology