Recently, the "East Counting West Computing" project was officially launched, through the construction of a new computing power network system integrating data centers, cloud computing and big data, so that the computing power resources in the western region can better support the computing of eastern data and empower digital development. Computing power, a powerful concept in the era of the digital economy, has once again entered the public eye strongly.
How important is hash rate? And how will it develop? Hear what industry experts have to say.
On May 26, 2021, participants were at the scene of the 2021 China International Big Data Industry Expo. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ou Dongqu
Computing power is becoming an important driving force in the era of the digital economy
Hu Jianbo, vice president of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said that in 2020, the total scale of digital economies in 47 countries around the world will reach 32.6 trillion US dollars. Among them, the scale of China's digital economy is 5.4 trillion US dollars, ranking second in the world; an increase of 9.6% year-on-year, ranking first in the world; its proportion of GDP has shown a steady growth trend in the past 10 years, and it has also maintained a strong resilience in the epidemic.
Industry experts say that the key element of the development of the digital economy is data, and the key to making data work is computing power, that is, the ability to process data. "Computing power is becoming an important driving force in the era of digital economy" has become a consensus.
In February this year, the National Development and Reform Commission and other four departments clearly launched the construction of 8 national computing hub nodes in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and other regions, and planned 10 national data center clusters, and the "East Number West Calculation" project was officially launched.
On March 1, the Western Cloud Base National (Zhongwei) Data Center China Unicom Data Center Computer Room. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Wang Peng
According to the "2021-2022 Global Computing Power Index Evaluation Report" jointly released by International Data Corporation (IDC), Inspur Information and the Global Industry Research Institute of Tsinghua University, China attaches great importance to the construction of new infrastructure, the digital transformation of the industry and cutting-edge technological innovation. In this context, China's computing power level increased by 13.5% year-on-year, the largest increase in the world, and the computing power index ranked second in the world, second only to the United States.
The report predicts that with the breakthrough and innovation of a new generation of information and communication technology, and the deep integration and development of the digital economy and the real economy, the advantages of the first computing power countries or regions may be further strengthened, and the backwardness of the late-developing countries or regions may be more obvious.
"It is necessary to gather massive amounts of data and find ways to improve the quality of data, but also to improve computing power to make good use of these high-quality data, which is a significant feature of our era to promote economic development." Li Donghong, deputy dean of the Institute of Global Industry At Tsinghua University, said.
From computing to intelligent computing, empowering the industry to be intelligent
How does computing power boost economic growth? Li Donghong said that on the one hand, computing power itself has produced some emerging digital industries around the application of data generation, storage, invocation and other scenarios; on the other hand, traditional industries are relying on computing power to achieve their own transformation and upgrading, driving the rapid development of industrial digitalization process.
The information development of automobile manufacturing enterprises is the epitome of this change. From using VR technology to complete the review of new car shapes without producing real prototypes, to applying digital twin technology to reduce manufacturing costs and increase production efficiency, to the future of being able to customize cars for personalized preferences... To develop these R&D scenarios more efficiently, more powerful computing power support is needed.
On November 7, 2021, at the SF Huajun Distribution Center in Qingdao, the automatic intelligent sorting system sorted parcels. Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Liang Xiaopeng)
What is the future of computing power development? Experts believe that the emergence and development of AI has opened the era of intelligent computing.
The aforementioned report points out that AI computing reflects a country's cutting-edge computing power. In the past few years, China's AI computing power market has achieved rapid development, the level of AI computing development has increased rapidly, and the scale of AI server expenditure has surpassed that of the United States for the first time and ranked first in the world.
Logistics park application of AI, robots and automation equipment to achieve logistics from automation to intelligence, banks based on customers' historical lending, social attributes, credit and other elements to build a risk control model greatly reduce the loss rate, scientists use AI acceleration technology to efficiently carry out ancient DNA gene sequencing...... The upgrade from traditional computing to intelligent computing has also promoted the upgrading of enterprise informatization construction from digitalization to intelligence.
Huge demand calls for the infrastructure of computing power
In the face of the huge demand for computing power from AI applications, the mainland continues to promote the orderly development of intelligent computing centers at the national level and build a new type of intelligent infrastructure; the enterprise level is also actively building an intensive and efficient intelligent computing center, a new form of computing power production and supply.
In the past two years, a series of documents such as the Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of a National Integrated Big Data Center Collaborative Innovation System, the Implementation Plan for the Computing Power Hub of the National Integrated Big Data Center Collaborative Innovation System, and the Three-Year Action Plan for the Development of New Data Centers (2021-2023) have been introduced, and the construction of a unified data center infrastructure nationwide has been fully rolled out.
Peng Zhen, president of Inspur Information, believes that taking computing power as a new infrastructure is the cognitive consensus of the country's digital transformation, "We are also more and more aware that through the integration of the digital economy and the real economy, the improvement of quality and efficiency has brought about great changes in the productivity of the entire society."
"Enterprise innovation needs the support of computing power, but it is almost unrealistic for a small and micro enterprise or an innovative enterprise to build a huge algorithm capability and data capability in the early stage." Peng Zhen said that with the gradual deepening of the integration of digital reality, we will face more complex scenarios, more huge amounts of information and more efficient decision-making needs, need a new intelligent computing architecture, and open up computing power, algorithms, and data into public resources, transform them into a shared social resource, and provide more enterprises with innovative soil.
In the view of Wang Endong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the infrastructure construction of computing power should take computing power services as the core, and through the unified scheduling and external services of computing, storage, network and other capabilities of the intelligent computing center, the computing power will be provided to thousands of industries like water and electricity, helping the efficient development of intelligent applications in the industry and accelerating the AI of the industry and industry. (Reporter Wen Jinghua)