"Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" on February 24 (editor Song Ziqiao) The integrated computing power service platform of East Data and West Computing was released in Yinchuan, Ningxia on the morning of February 24, and was officially put into operation. As the first computing power trading platform in China, the platform has incorporated a total of 27 domestic leading enterprises such as Dawning, Huawei, ZTE, Alibaba Cloud, and Tianyi Cloud, major domestic big data institutions such as the State Information Center and Beijing Research Institute of Big Data, as well as large model leading enterprises such as SenseTime and Baidu through resource integration.
In the past, when users purchased computing power services, they needed to find and consult in multiple computing power enterprises, and enterprises were also fighting for themselves, lacking unified resource allocation, efficiency could not be maximized, and computing power resources were wasted to a certain extent.
On the same day, the Qingyang data center cluster project of the Gansu hub node of the national integrated computing power network was started, which belongs to one of the eight national computing power hub nodes of East Data and West Computing.
In addition, according to CCTV news reports, with the acceleration of the "East Data West Computing" strategy, Ningxia aims at the most scarce and urgently needed ChatGPT computing power, and has started construction of a GPU large computing power base in Ningxia Zhongwei, and after completion, it will be connected to the East Data and West Computing Integrated Trading Platform to support the large computing power services urgently needed by the domestic artificial intelligence computing platform.
Affected by the above news, on the afternoon of the 24th, the "East Data and West Calculation" sector became the focus of the market, during which Meiliyun and Zhongke Shuguang once rose to the limit, and Runjian shares, Tongfang shares, Tolls, Dataport, etc. followed suit.
▌Artificial intelligence calls for computing power upgrades
In the digital era, computing power has become an important infrastructure for the development of the national economy, from face recognition, intelligent voice broadcasting, to automatic driving, industrial digital twins, behind countless visible smart applications, is the invisible computing power in the support. IDC research shows that for every 1 percentage point increase in the computing power index, the digital economy and GDP will increase by 3.3‰ and 1.8‰, respectively.
The progress of artificial intelligence is still calling for computing power upgrades. As a representative of AIGC applications, the computing power consumption of ChatGPT is even more eye-popping - it relies on the large model GPT3.5, and the total computing power consumption of GPT3.5 is about 3640PF-days, that is, if it is calculated one quadrillion times per second, it takes 3640 days to calculate. According to OpenAI's research, the computing power required for AI training has grown exponentially faster than Moore's Law for hardware.
At the same time, due to the high investment, high risk, strong externality and high monopoly characteristics of computing power, this determines that the international competition of computing power is a competition dominated by the participation of large countries and large enterprises. On February 18, 2022, the state launched the large-scale project of "East Data and West Computing" to coordinate computing power resources in the east and west, and planned to set up 8 hubs and 10 national data centers.
At present, the total investment of the East Data and West Computing Project exceeds 400 billion yuan, and the effect of computing power agglomeration has initially appeared.
▌The industrial pull effect is eight times The five major investment directions are becoming clearer
East data and west computing project is the category of new infrastructure, "number" refers to data, "calculation" refers to computing power, that is, the data in the east is transmitted to the west for calculation and processing. In order to improve the data processing capacity in the western region, it is urgent to build more local data centers, which will further drive upstream and downstream investment in data centers. According to media reports, some authoritative institutions and experts estimate that the annual investment volume of the "East Data and West Calculation" project will reach hundreds of billions of yuan, and the industrial pulling effect will reach eight times.
The data center industry chain is huge, involving upstream hardware equipment (such as IT equipment, network equipment, air conditioning/power supply equipment, etc.), optical modules, optical components, and midstream IDC manufacturers. Based on the research reports of a number of institutions, the five main investment lines are worth paying attention to:
(1) The overall scarcity of IDCs in first-tier cities and surrounding areas will be further amplified with the growth of demand, and the bargaining power of IDC companies that master scarce resources is expected to increase. Relevant targets include Baoxin Software, Dataport (in cooperation with Alibaba), Kehua Hengsheng (in cooperation with Tencent), Kehua Data, Aofei Data, Capital Online, Meiliyun, Sinnet, etc.
(2) Under the background of "dual carbon", green energy conservation is the core requirement of East Data and West Calculation, and low PUE requirements benefit equipment suppliers with a high proportion of investment in energy consumption-related power supply and distribution systems, cooling systems and so on. Relevant temperature control targets include Invic (Internet IDC air conditioning faucet), Jialito (bound to China Mobile), Gao Lan Co., Ltd., Imicon and Kehua Data.
(3) Operators are not only the builders of computing power infrastructure and backbone transmission networks, but also the providers of downstream cloud computing services, and the bearer carrier of "East Data and West Computing", and their huge marketing teams and networks will help transform themselves into digital infrastructure service providers integrating computing and network. Relevant targets include China Mobile (vigorously developing IDC construction), China Telecom (the first cabinet in China), and Capital Online (IDC marketing).
(4) The "East Data and West Computing" project has the characteristics of long-distance transportation, increased data center density, and high computing power requirements, and strengthening the connection of network facilities will effectively improve the delay problem, and ICT links such as transmission network equipment, optical fiber and cable, and optical modules will usher in incremental demand. Relevant targets include Xinyisheng, Zhongji Xuchuang, and Borche Technology in the field of optical modules; Tianfu Communication, Tengjing Technology, Optical Library Technology in the field of optical components; Zhongtian Technology, Hengtong Optoelectronics, etc. in the field of optical fiber and cable.
(5) Data centers need a lot of high-performance computing chips. Capital Securities analyst He Lizhong said that high-performance computing chips are the most difficult battle for chip localization, at present Chinese mainland high-performance computing chips are in their infancy, and there are fewer A-share related companies, and it is recommended to pay attention to Montage Technology, Guoxin Technology, Juchen Shares, GigaDevice Innovation, Jingjiawei, Cambrian, VeriSilicon Shares.
(Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, Song Ziqiao)
![SAI founder talks about U.S. stock IPO: do clean computing power field "Tesla" to reduce carbon emissions[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)