"East Digital and West Calculation" Huili Digital China Construction

In February 2022, four departments including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Central Cyberspace Office jointly issued a notice, and agreed to start 8 places in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta region, the Guangdong -Hong Kong -Macao Greater Bay Area, Chengdu -Chongqing region, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu, Ningxia and other places. Build a national computing power hub node and plan 10 national data center clusters. At this point, the overall layout design of the National Integrated Big Data Center system has been officially launched. This is another important national strategic project after the project of "South Water Diversion", "West Delivery" and "West Qi East" and other projects.

Correct computing power network infrastructure

"Digital" refers to data, "calculation" is the computing power, which is the ability to process data. The so -called "East Digital and West Calculation" is a new type of computing power network system that builds data centers, cloud computing, and big data integration to store eastern data to west storage and calculation. So why is "East" "Western calculation"? Zheng Weimin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University, said that at present, most of the data centers in my country are distributed in the eastern region, but due to tight land resources and high power costs. Yuan is not conducive to achieving carbon neutralization and carbon peaks. The western region has the advantages of land resources and power resources (clean energy), which provides convenient conditions for the establishment of memory.

“随着互联网的普及，各行各业都有大量数据需要处理，对算力的需求非常庞大，而且还在不断增长。”中国社会科学院可持续发展研究中心副主任陈迎介绍，截至2021年底， my country is using the size of data center racks to reach 5.2 million, and the average annual compound growth rate of more than 30%in the past five years has exceeded 30%. Data centers not only need to occupy land, but also have a huge power consumption of data.

Data show that in 2021, my country ’s electricity consumption was 8312.8 billion kilowatt -hours. Among them, the annual electricity consumption of the data center accounts for about 2%of the power consumption of the whole society, and the growth is rapid. Chen Ying said that for most cities and regions, there is no special power discount or subsidy, electricity bills account for about 60%of the operating costs, and Beijing or Shanghai and other places can reach 70%-80%. The data center is both a large power consumption and a large carbon emission household. In 2021, the national data center carbon dioxide emissions reached 78.3 million tons.

According to the national integrated big data center system, the eight national computing power hub nodes will be used as the backbone connection point of my country's computing power network, developing data centers clusters, and cooperating between data centers and networks, cloud computing, and big data. As a strategic fulcrum of the country's "East Digital and West Calculation" project, promote the orderly transfer of computing power resources to the west to solve the problem of imbalance between the supply and demand of the east and west.

Among the eight hub nodes, the Beijing -Tianjin -Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta region, the Guangdong -Hong Kong -Macao Greater Bay Area, and Chengdu -Chongqing areas belong to the core areas of my country's economic development, with large users. Local computing power needs are not large, and the computing power needs in the eastern region can be undertaken.

So, which data should be sent to the west to calculate? Zheng Weimin proposed that the computing power hub and data centers in the west can be mainly used to deal with back -end processing, offline analysis, and storage of backups. , Financial securities, video calls, game procedures, artificial intelligence reasoning and other businesses that require high networks.

"East Digital West Calculation" potential is huge

In recent years, Zhangjiakou has been stored in a large -scale green storage as the starting point, which has continuously promoted the development of the big data industry, and gradually developed into a new engine of industrial transformation and upgrading, economic quality improvement and efficiency. The starting area of ​​the Zhangjiakou data center cluster is Huailai County, Zhangbei County, and Xuanhua District, Zhangjiakou City. The data center cluster will actively undertake real -time computing power needs of Beijing and other places, and build real -time computing power centers that radiate North China, Northeast and even the country. Up to now, 12 data centers such as Ali, Tencent, Qinhuai, and other 12 data centers have been put into operation here, and 1.03 million units are put into operation.

The data center industry has a huge role in improving the production efficiency of the whole society and the production rate of the whole factor. Chen Ying believes that the "East Digital and West Calculation" project attempts to change the unbalanced pattern of the data center distribution area, so that the demand and resources of the east and west are optimized and allocated to complement the advantages. This layout helps to further improve the overall computing power level of the country, and promote the development of the data center industry towards green, integrated, intensive, and efficient. At the same time, it is conducive to increasing the layout and construction of digital infrastructure in the western region, promoting the green and low -carbon development of the data center industry, and driving the transfer of related industries. It has important value for digital China construction and realizing the "dual carbon" goals.

The "East Digital West Calculation" project will develop the healthy development of information technology and green energy in the western region of Huili. Lin Xinhua, deputy director of the network information center of Shanghai Jiaotong University, believes that the "East Digital West Calculation" project is a win -win measure in response to the construction of data centers. On the one hand, the rich power and land resources in the western region will be fully utilized; on the other hand, the power burden in the eastern region will be greatly reduced, and the land demand for data centers will also be greatly reduced. In promoting regional economic development, through the construction of various data centers, not only can it drive the development of related industries and talent training, reduce the pressure of large cities in the eastern cities, but also help stimulate the economic development of the western region and improve the living standards of residents.

Provide strong support for the construction of digital China

As of April 2022, among the 10 national data centers across the country, 25 new projects were started, and the size of the data center reached 540,000 standard racks. The scale of computing power was huge, driving investment of more than 190 billion yuan in various aspects. "At present, my country's computing power can be divided into three categories." Zheng Weimin introduced that the first category is high -performance calculation, that is, "super calculation", there are more than a dozen ultra -high performance calculation centers in my country. It plays a great role in national defense, national economy, and national living standards. The second category is artificial intelligence computers that have emerged in recent years. They mainly deal with artificial intelligence applications. Many artificial intelligence computer centers are building in China and developed rapidly. The third category is the data center, which is more of a public service for everyone through cloud computing. Among them, the first two types of computing power are more suitable for built in the west, and the data center computing power has high requirements for real -time. At present, it cannot be built to the west.

Zheng Weimin suggested to promote the "East Digital and West Calculation" project and dispel the concerns of corporate data. First of all, it is necessary to solve the problem of grid -ups and strive to achieve the transmission requirements of high bandwidth and low delay. In addition, with the development of computing power infrastructure in various places, the formation of unified standards and unified scheduling of computing power networking is the general trend. Therefore, the second thing that needs to be solved is to improve the scheduling program as soon as possible, and to achieve effective allocation of computing power resources through computing power scheduling.

Lin Xinhua said that building a national integrated computing power network system must seize two key points. First, in accordance with the unified national layout, the construction of each data center and computing centers must control the rhythm and advance in an orderly manner. Second, we must attach importance to norms and standards. Because the construction of each center uses different technical solutions of different manufacturers, in order to achieve the smooth use of digital resources and the interconnection of computing resources, it is necessary to pay attention to the formulation of data specifications and the development of data interaction standards from the beginning.

The "East Digital and West Calculation" project will inevitably face many difficulties in the process of promotion. Many problems have attracted great attention and proceed to solve it, such as technical problems and policy issues. In Lin Xinhua's view, compared with projects such as "East Digital and West Calculation" and "South Water and the North" and "West Qi East", there is a essential difference, that is, the data in "East Digital West Calculation" is artificial resources, and other engineering is transported All are natural resources. Natural resources have low thresholds in use, and their requirements for people are not high. However, the artificial resources of data are different. There is a high threshold in use. The data can play the maximum role in the hands of people with professional knowledge and skills. Therefore, the smooth advancement of the "East Digital West Calculation" project requires a lot of professional talents who understand data and calculations to support it. We must pay special attention to this issue, increase talent training, and improve the level of talent reserves and services.

Global digital waves have made data a key production factors after land, capital, labor, and technology. With the gradual advancement of the "East Digital and West Calculation" project, the accelerated development of relevant industries such as big data, cloud computing, super computing centers, and new generation of network technology, open the channel data directly to ensure the major The project goals and tasks will be implemented, which will inject new kinetic energy into the construction of digital China and the promotion of high -quality economic development.

Source: "China Social Sciences"

Author: Reporter Duan Danjie

- END -