Among the 108 counties and cities in Xinjiang, Yiwu County is a very personalized existence.
The large and small in the volume go hand in hand, and the overall namelessness and the local excellence coexist.
When you talk about this side of it, the opposite side of it will immediately jump out and show it to you.
This great contrast and tension makes Igo both charming and incomprehensible.
Now, Yiwu, who lives in a remote corner, is bravely standing at the forefront of the tide and becoming a trendsetter in the computing economy.
According to Shi Jiuyun/Xinjiang Daily, on April 25, the Hami (Yiwu) Cloud Silk Road Convergence Computing Center and the "Triple Networks" (Computing Network, Video Network, Radio and Electricity Network) Computing Network Demonstration Project were put into operation, becoming the first "Triple Networks in One" computing network demonstration project based on independent controllable non-IP protocol officially launched in Xinjiang. After the completion of the second phase of the project at the end of the year, Yiwu County will become the largest integrated computing power center in Xinjiang.
On April 25, the Hami (Yiwu) Cloud Silk Road Convergence Computing Center and the "Triple Networks" Computing Network Demonstration Project were officially launched at the ceremony. Photo by Liu Yahui
No one would have thought that Yiwu, who had to cross the East Tianshan Mountains and spend 3 hours driving to Hami, would emerge at the forefront of science and technology with the temperament of a "dark horse" of computing power.
The small town of Igo is naturally beautiful and does not give up on himself
I don't know when people mentioned Igo, they would add a small town in front of Igo, and Igo became a small town Igo.
The deep binding between "small town" and Igo has a long history.
The most direct reason is that the county seat is too small, once so small that "a street lamp lights up the whole city, a naan cake rolls out of the city, and there is not a single traffic light in the whole city." ”
The small "pocket" county also represents a lag in development. You know, it wasn't until 2001 that Yiwu County's GDP exceeded 100 million yuan for the first time.
However, the small size of the county and the lagging development of Yiwu cannot hide Yiwu's "natural beauty".
Yiwu County, located in the northeast of Xinjiang and the eastern section of the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountains, faces Yizhou District in the south and borders Mongolia in the northeast, with a land area of 19,519 square kilometers, which naturally constitutes a huge treasure pot.
With 23.581 billion tons of coal reserves, 910 million tons of oil reserves, more than 100 million kilowatts of wind and solar resources, and other mineral resources such as iron and gold, Yiwu has the potential to become an energy city and a strong industrial county.
Although he was "born beautiful", Igo did not want to make progress. Bidding farewell to the simple and extensive development mode of digging and selling coal, embracing the concept of green development, and adhering to the idea of extending the chain, supplementing the chain, strengthening the chain, and strengthening the industrial cluster, Yiwu has ushered in an inflection point in terms of development speed and quality.
Yiwu took out embroidery efforts to make a fuss about coal resources, and built the Naomaohu Circular Economy Industrial Park, which is known as the "epitome of the national coal chemical industry", forming a circular development pattern of upstream and downstream support.
Coal-to-methanol, coal tar, upgrading coal, polypropylene...... 58 coal-based chemical enterprises, each showing their powers, coal gradually changed from "industrial coarse grain" to "industrial fine grain".
In Yiwu Industrial Park, the exterior view of the coal-based methyl methacrylate production unit of Xinjiang Zhongyou Puhui Technology Co., Ltd. Photo by Liu Yahui
"One son breaks through" and "all the plates are alive". The process of the modern industry represented by the coal chemical cluster industry from small to large and from weak to strong has prepared the strength of Yiwu.
In 2008, the county's GDP exceeded 1 billion yuan for the first time, in 2021, Yiwu County's GDP exceeded 10 billion yuan for the first time, and in 2023, when the national per capita GDP reached 89,400 yuan, Yiwu County's GDP reached 22.891 billion yuan, and the county's per capita GDP exceeded 500,000 yuan, and in May 2023, it was successfully selected into the second batch of 92 innovative counties (cities) in the country.
The small city of Yiwu is still the one with a small population and a small county, but when the era of digital economy comes, it has made a series of preparations for ideology, infrastructure, industrial base, economic volume, and experience in promoting project implementation.
Belonging to Hami, the wind is strong and the time is right
In February 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments jointly issued a document agreeing to start the construction of national computing hub nodes in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Chengdu-Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu, and Ningxia, and planned 10 national data center clusters such as Zhangjiakou cluster and Qingyang cluster. So far, the overall layout design of the national integrated big data center system has been completed, and the "Eastern Data and Western Computing" project has been officially launched.
An era of digital economy based on computing power, all things perceived, all things are connected, and all things are intelligent, is accelerating and becoming the strongest outlet of the times.
But there is a natural "flaw" in computing power, it is a large power consumer. The consensus of the industry is that the end of computing power is electricity, and without sufficient power supply, the development of computing power economy is impossible.
The keen Hami is aware of the coming of the opportunity, and more importantly, Hami has sufficient confidence and confidence to seize the opportunity.
Hami, the "East Gate" of Xinjiang, is a national wind power base of 10 million kilowatts, a photovoltaic base of 1 million kilowatts, and the largest wind, solar and thermal power bundling and delivery base in China. Up to now, the installed power capacity of Hami grid-connected power has reached 24,606,500 kilowatts, and the installed capacity of new energy accounts for 64.1%, which is equivalent to 0.641 kWh of green electricity for every kilowatt-hour of electricity. The installed capacity of new energy ranks first in Xinjiang.
The opportunity of computing power economy is simply tailor-made for Hami, which is full of power. It is worth mentioning that one of the first 20 CSP demonstration projects in the country and the only CSP project in Xinjiang, the Hami 50 megatower CSP power station is located in Naomaohu Town, Yiwu County, Hami City. The Naomaohu wind area is also a key area for the planning of Hami's 10 million kilowatt wind power base. In recent years, while promoting the development of the coal chemical industry, Yiwu County has made great efforts in the construction of a new power network with multi-energy complementarity, and has achieved remarkable results in the construction of an integrated energy cycle system of source, grid, load and storage.
Exterior view of the Hami 50 MW molten salt tower CSP power station in Naomaohu Town, Yiwu County (drone photo taken on August 31, 2021). Photo by Shi Jiuyun/Xinjiang Daily reporter Cai Zengle
In 2023, one year after the full launch of the national "Eastern Data and Western Computing" project, Hami City, together with relevant domestic scientific research institutions, innovatively established the Energy Computing Power Fusion (Hami) Research Institute, taking the first substantial step in the development of computing power economy. At the same time, it actively planned to build the Zhengzhou-Qingyang-Hami urban computing network experimental field, and studied and launched the construction plan of the Digital Silk Road computing power pilot area and the development plan of the digital computing and electricity industry.
It was at this time that Yiwu entered the field of vision of the government, scientific research institutions and investment enterprises.
As one of the two counties in the "Shanbei" of Hami City, Yiwu County is a small county in population and was once a small economic county compared with the Yizhou District in the "Shannan". However, the citizens of Yiwu District like to cross the Tianshan Mountains to escape the heat in the small city of Yiwu in the middle of summer, compared with the high temperature of more than 30 degrees Celsius in Yizhou District, Yiwu does not even need to turn on the air conditioning in summer.
Geographically, the elevation of Yiwu County is 1,700 meters, which is about 1,000 meters higher than the urban area of Yizhou District.
Overlooking the county seat of Igo. Photo by Liu Yahui
"Hami has unique advantages in energy and electricity, especially in 'wind and solar' new energy. However, computing power is a high-energy consumption industry, and the problem of heat dissipation must be solved. Yiwu County, Hami City, is located at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains, with a cool climate all year round, which is equivalent to a natural 'air-conditioned room', which is very suitable for the construction of a large-scale intelligent computing center. Liang Yu, vice president of Luen Thai Cluster (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., which invested in the Hami computing power industry project, explained the reasons for choosing Hami and Yiwu.
At a time when the intelligent computing power market was just emerging, but it had shown a trend of rapid development, Yiwu got the license plate to enter a new track.
The city of computing power Dapeng rises with the wind one day
The start is a sprint.
At the end of 2023, the Yiwu Computing Economy Demonstration Zone will welcome the first batch of 5 postdoctoral fellows. At the beginning of this year, the second batch of 10 postdoctoral fellows arrived in Yiwu one after another. In just a few months, Igo welcomed 15 postdoctoral fellows to join.
On April 11 this year, Hami City held a new quality productivity major industry investment signing conference, and signed 6 computing power industry investment projects on the spot, with a total investment of 21 billion yuan.
These projects include: two 2000P and two 1000P intelligent computing centers coupled new energy investment projects in the computing industry, one intelligent computing large model application project in the computing industry, and one intelligent computing large model cloud service project in the computing industry.
On April 11, Hami City held a new quality productivity major industry investment signing conference. The picture shows the signing site. Photo by Shi Jiuyun/Xinjiang Daily reporter Wei Yonggui
"Yiwu County's investment environment and government services are very good and efficient. Qu Guang, vice president of Beijing Kaiyun United Information Technology Group Co., Ltd., which plans to invest in the construction of the Silk Road Aerospace Convergence Intelligent Computing Center project in Yiwu, said.
Qu Guang is true, Yiwu's efficiency is supported by practice. On April 25, the first phase of the intelligent computing 128P project, which started construction in October last year, was completed, which took half a year.
For the first time in history, Yiwu has the computing power of 64,000 high-performance computers, realizing a major breakthrough in the computing power industry from scratch and from 0 to 1, taking a solid step in the integration and development of energy computing power, and achieving landmark major results.
In the computer room of the first phase of the 128P project, the equipment has been commissioned and put into operation. Photo by Guo Ziyi
But that's just the beginning. According to Li Chao, executive director of the Energy Computing Convergence (Hami) Research Institute, the intelligent computing power of the second phase of the project will reach 1000P, which is expected to be completed and put into use by the end of the year.
On March 19, Xinhua News Agency said in a report entitled "The Computing Scale of the Gansu Hub Node of the "Eastern Data and Western Computing" has reached a new level, and the 1,000 GPU servers of the Qingyang Computing Center of the "Eastern Data and Western Computing" national hub have been running stably, and the computing power scale of the Qingyang Data Center Cluster, the hub node of the Gansu hub node of the national integrated computing network, has reached 5300P.
Yiwu, who has the experience of leapfrogging GDP, plans to build Yiwu County Computing Economic Industrial Park into an innovation park that gathers about 6,000 young computing talents and settles in 30 to 50 innovative enterprises in the next two to three years, forming an industrial ecology and achieving tens of thousands of tons of computing power based on intelligent computing.
At this point, Yiwu County's industrial ambition is no longer a single line of comprehensive energy and energy industry, but to build two 100-billion-level industrial clusters of computing power and computing power network, comprehensive energy and energy and chemical industry.
At the end of last year, the relevant person in charge of Yiwu County said in an interview with the media that Yiwu in the future will be an international and modern boutique small city with the coupling of computing power base and energy base, the integration of digital computing and electricity industry, and the aggregation of talents and undertakings.
It's still a small town, but this one is small, and it's not backward.
Tianshan Net/Xinjiang Daily reporter Zhao Yuwei