Text/Zhang Congxiang
Editor/Wang Xiaokun
An engineering design related to the national big data center system is quietly laying out.
Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Central Cyberspace Administration, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the National Energy Administration recently 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.
Source: Collation of public information
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.
This is also another super major project after the "West-to-East Power Transmission" (which began in the 1970s), the "West-to-East Gas Transmission" (approved in February 2000), and the "South-to-North Water Diversion" (started on December 27, 2002).
Different from the previous traditional project (hydropower and coal) infrastructure, this "east counting west counting" is more like the new infrastructure at the level of national computing power development in the era of digital economy.
So, what is "counting the east and counting the west"? How to build "Counting East and Counting West"? Which industrial chains will be beneficial?
What is counting east and west?
"Number" refers to data, and "calculation" is computing power, that is, the ability to process data. According to the professional description, "East Digital West Computing" is to build a new type of computing power network system integrating data centers, cloud computing and big data, aiming to "accelerate the large-scale layout of data centers to the western computing hub", and at the same time to "deploy some businesses with higher network requirements in the eastern hubs such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area".
In the booming digital age, as the core productivity of the digital economy, data and computing power have become the new focus of a new round. According to the "2020 Global Computing Power Index Evaluation Report" released by Inspur Information and IDC, the average increase in the computing power index is 1 percentage point, and the digital economy and GDP may grow by 3.3 ‰ and 1.8 ‰ respectively.
At present, the size of the mainland data center has reached 5 million standard racks, and the computing power has reached 130EFLOPS (130 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. Developing and improving computing power is crucial to the development of the digital economy.
Image source: IC Photo
Why do you do the math?
We know that data centers consume a lot of electricity and have long been at the top of the mainland's electricity consumption rankings. According to the latest national data, the annual electricity consumption of domestic data centers in 2020 is 204.5 billion kWh, accounting for 2.7% of the total electricity consumption of the whole society. Industry insiders say these electricity consumption is equivalent to burning 60 million tons of coal and emitting 160 million tons of carbon dioxide. At present, most of the mainland data centers are distributed in the eastern region, and at the moment when land, energy and other resources are becoming increasingly tight, the costs brought about by the large-scale development of data centers in the east are often high.
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. Therefore, in order to give full play to the advantages of the mainland's institutional mechanisms, we should integrate the layout from a national perspective, optimize the allocation of resources, and improve the efficiency of resource use.
Affected by the level of regional economic development, the distribution of data centers in the mainland shows the status quo of more east and less west, and the main demand is also concentrated in the eastern region (first- and second-tier cities). Data from China's data center big platform shows that data centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou account for about 26% of the national share. More realistically, the demand for data centers in the eastern core region is often in short supply, while the western region is oversupplied.
The implementation of the East And West Computing Project will surely balance the level of data centers and digital economy development in the eastern and western parts of the mainland, further accelerate the pace of construction of digital infrastructure in the mainland, inject new impetus into the construction of a digital power, and provide more momentum for economic growth. At the same time, the rational use of renewable energy and the reduction of carbon emissions from thermal power generation will also help the mainland achieve the goal of carbon neutrality and carbon peaking.
Optimize the layout of data centers and drive a balanced regional economy
Data centers are the centers of data storage and computing, and the heart of digital economy networks. It is mentioned in the 14th Five-Year Plan of the People's Republic of China that it is necessary to promote the integration of cloud-network collaboration and computing-network integration, and accelerate the construction of a nationally integrated big data center system with algorithms, computing power, data, and application resources.
Nowadays, the digital economy has fully penetrated into our lives, changing our production and lifestyle, from the national economic development to a small health code, which is inseparable from the support of the digital economy and data.
With the gradual implementation of 5G technology applications and the consequent increase in speed, people's demand for data centers will only increase. This will drive the need to upgrade existing data center network infrastructure, and more new data centers will be built closer to the data source to reduce latency. Correspondingly, the demand growth of data centers is increasing year by year.
Under the promotion of the eastern and western computing projects, the construction of data centers in the western region and the establishment of green power generation facilities and other industrial chains are conducive to enhancing the local economic development. Some experts have analyzed that under the reality of unbalanced economic development and differences in resource endowments, a large layout of resource allocation and complementary advantages at the national level, with data flow to lead the flow of materials, capital, talent and technology, is conducive to opening up the main artery of the digital economy in the east and west, and forming a new pattern of coordinated development of the east and west with data as the link.
What opportunities will the East and West bring?
From the current planning point of view, in the short term, the information network infrastructure, communication backbone network, IDC data center, and IT equipment procurement will benefit from the implementation of the policy. In the medium term, the cloud computing industry chain, operators, cloud vendors, and information security will be developed. In the long run, downstream applications, such as ultra-high definition, autonomous driving, AR/VR, etc., will further develop with the improvement of data center construction.
For enterprises that provide computing power, accelerate the realization of cloud-network collaboration and improve the quality of computing power services. Reduce network, electricity and other costs. The planning of computing power resources is more targeted and the efficiency of resource use is improved. For enterprises that use computing power, it is helpful to enjoy more convenient and easy-to-use computing power services. Further reduce the cost of cloud usage and accelerate digital transformation.
For the cloud vendor giants, it is more like accelerating the arms race in the data center. According to public information, Huawei has enabled the Gui'an data center and laid out five major data centers in Gui'an, Wulanchabu, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, yangtze river delta, Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. Alibaba has also laid out data center clusters in hubs such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Chengdu-Chongqing, and Wulanchabu to improve the overall level of computing power. Tencent also put into operation the Gui'an Seven Star Disaster Recovery Data Center in Guizhou, while also stepping up its layout in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, yangtze river delta and Chengdu-Chongqing.
At present, the annual demand for continental data centers is 5 million standard racks, according to the investment calculation of 100,000-150,000 yuan per standard rack, the total investment scale will reach 500 billion yuan - 750 billion yuan per year, which will be a new trillion-level track.
Since its proposal, the East Number West Calculation has attracted many hot discussions, and under the pursuit of policies and capital, the concept stocks related to the East Number West Calculation have risen. 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. As of February 28, the Wind East-West Calculation Index showed 17.49%.
Under the hot track, more need for rational development of the industry. A number of insiders who have contact with the Eastern And Western Calculation told 36Kr that it is necessary to be wary of some people taking the opportunity to rub the hot speculation concept of the Eastern And Western Calculation, inflate the stock price and even convey benefits. Let the technology return to technology, let the industry return to the industry.