New technology and new infrastructure: “Digital in the east and calculation in the west” to create a new pattern of digital economy

Not long ago, the National Development and Reform Commission and other four ministries and commissions jointly issued a notice to start construction 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 It is a national computing power hub node and has planned 10 national data center clusters. This national strategic project is also known as "Eastern Data and Western Computing". So what is? Counting east and west?? What changes can it bring to our lives? First, let’s understand two concepts: data and computing power.

In daily life, during our daily commute to and from get off work, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of people across the country may use taxi software at the same time. Some are hailing taxis, and there are drivers waiting to be called. of. So much data and information need to be processed in a short period of time without making any mistakes. How can this be done?

In the information society, data can be symbols, text, numbers, voices, images, videos, etc. Every day, when we turn on our mobile phones, data is generated. In society, no matter in public services, economic operations, scientific research and other fields, data is generated every moment, and massive data requires computing power to support it.

Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said: The so-called computing power refers to the amount of information data that can be processed per second. There was once published data. In order to do human speech recognition, it is necessary to establish a mathematical model and optimize the artificial intelligence algorithm for recognition. It is necessary to mobilize 1751 parameters and consume 45TB of data. Behind this is the supply of big data, and the other It just requires corresponding computing power to support it. ?

The amount of data generated by China has exceeded that of the United States, but in terms of computing power. In 2020, the United States' computing power accounts for 36% of the world's computing power, and China's computing power accounts for 31% of the world's. This means that China's computing power cannot satisfy the large-scale data generated by China. The processing of massive data is completed in the data center.

Bao Jian, assistant general manager of China Mobile Hohhot Data Center, said: The entire computing capacity of the data center can support concurrent execution of all users across the country. For frequently used taxi-hailing travel applications, customers are distributed across the country. , his demand will be transmitted to the data center for calculation via the Internet within 10 milliseconds. After the calculation of his demand is completed, the optimal route, the most reasonable driver, and the travel plan will be fed back to his mobile phone. Complete a process on the taxi-hailing software and notify the nearest driver where to pick him up. ?

In addition to daily services such as taxi hailing on mobile phones, a large amount of data is generated every moment and from all walks of life, flooding into data centers like sea water. One of the functions of data centers is to provide information on the network. ?

Based on the facilities, data information is calculated through powerful computing power. Not long ago, four ministries and commissions including the National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued a notice to launch the construction of national computing power hub nodes in eight places including Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Chengdu-Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu, and Ningxia, and 10 national data center clusters have been planned. This national strategic project is also known as "Digital from the East to the West". Data and computing power have been transformed into a new generation of production factors, and computing power infrastructure has been comprehensively promoted and has been elevated to the level of national strategic resource planning.

?Eastern calculation?Why should we?Western calculation??

Wu Hequan said: China’s regional development is unbalanced. The economy in the east is stronger than that in the west, and the same is true for the digital economy. In the east, like Shenzhen, the output value of its information industry accounts for one-tenth of the world's output; in areas such as Shanghai and Beijing, as the economy develops, they naturally have higher requirements for data computing capabilities. However, energy distribution is also unbalanced. On the contrary, China's energy resources are richer in the west. ?

The higher the computing power, the greater the demand for energy. When you walk into a data center, the most intuitive impression is rows of cabinets with rows of servers inside. These servers run day and night, performing data exchange, calculation, and storage tasks. A large data center cluster may have millions or tens of millions of servers, which consume a lot of power. The electricity bill alone accounts for 70% of the data center operation and maintenance costs.

Wu Hequan said: In this case, we can put the power-consuming data center in the west, make better use of the energy in the west, and even directly use renewable energy, thus reducing carbon emissions. ?

Many major projects in our country are designed to allocate resources more rationally, such as the south-to-north water diversion, west-to-east electricity transmission, and west-to-east gas transmission. The same is true for the east-to-west calculation. According to calculations and statistics from relevant departments, my country's data center power consumption has exceeded 200 billion kilowatt hours in 2020, accounting for approximately 2% of the total society's power consumption. The huge demand for electricity has brought about the original motivation for computing power to move westward.

Western regions such as Guizhou and Inner Mongolia are areas rich in power energy. Building data center clusters here does not require long-distance transmission of power, so electricity prices are low and data center operating costs are low. Inner Mongolia and Guizhou are both good places to escape the summer heat. The temperature in summer is not high. This unique climate condition is more suitable for data centers to save energy and reduce carbon emissions.

?Eastern number?How to go to ?Western number??

Data from the east and west are transferred to the data center cluster in the west across thousands of kilometers. How can this be achieved? As of the first half of this year, the number of national-level Internet backbone direct connection points in my country has reached 19. National-level Internet backbone direct connection points are mainly used to aggregate and clear communication traffic between regions and even across the country, reduce data transmission delays, and greatly improve the speed and quality of inter-network communication. This is the industrial Internet, east-to-west computing, etc. The development of new infrastructure has laid a solid network foundation.

Zhang Xuerong, director of the Big Data Development Administration Bureau of Guiyang City, Guizhou Province, said: When there were relatively few backbone direct connection points, China Unicom users in Guiyang needed to connect to Guangzhou from China Unicom users in Guiyang if they wanted to access telecommunications users in Chengdu. The interconnection point of China Unicom and then the telecommunications interconnection point of Shanghai can only be realized from Shanghai to Chengdu. Now direct connection can be achieved, and the delay is reduced to less than 20 milliseconds, which is equivalent to the same feeling when you play games in Shenzhen and when I play games in Guiyang. ?

Shortening network latency is of great significance to promoting high-quality innovative development of the digital economy. One second is equal to 1000 milliseconds. Usually it takes about 120 to 200 milliseconds for us to blink. With the establishment of a national-level Internet backbone direct connection point, the latency from Guizhou to Shanghai can be reduced to 25 milliseconds, and the latency to Guangzhou can be reduced to 12 milliseconds; the latency of mutual visits between Hohhot, Inner Mongolia and Beijing is only about 10 milliseconds. Figuratively speaking, in the blink of an eye, data transmission can run back and forth for more than 10 times between two places. Powerful computing power, coupled with high-speed data transmission, makes the application of digital technology broader and the development prospects of the digital economy broader.

? Counting from the east to the west? Why is it included in the new infrastructure?

Coordinating the construction of my country's data center infrastructure will inevitably drive the development and layout of the digital industry. "East-to-West Computing" is not just about balancing resources between the east and west. It is about accelerating the orderly transfer of related industries to the west in an environment where computing power infrastructure is deployed from east to west. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, it is expected that investment in big data centers will grow at a rate of more than 20% per year, driving a cumulative investment of more than 3 trillion yuan in all aspects. New infrastructure is a propeller to achieve high-quality economic development. Digitalization in the East and Data in the West has built a new foundation for the digital economy, formed a new support for high-quality development, and will also form a high-level new advantage for my country's independence.

How will counting in the east and west affect our social life?

Different from supercomputing centers, supercomputing focuses more on computing and serving the field of scientific research, while big data centers undertake multiple functions such as data storage, computing, and transmission. 10 national data centers The layout of the cluster creates a cloud ecosystem for our future economic life and serves the whole society. Inner Mongolia uses data center clusters to build a high-performance computing public service platform called "Light of Qingcheng" to serve the construction of smart cities.

Accelerating the construction of "Eastern Data and Western Computing" directly benefits various market entities. Data centers provide computing power to all walks of life and enterprises in need, and promote the development of the digital economy.

The construction of data centers will not only promote the rapid development of social economy, but will also serve all aspects of people's livelihood. The layout of the national data center cluster will also promote my country's internationalization process. Once completed, the Bank of China data center will handle hundreds of millions of transactions around the world every day.

As the new infrastructure in the digital economy era continues to improve, various new technologies, new industries, new business formats, and new models will continue to emerge, which will also promote the regional development of the western region.

Wu Hequan said: The data center placed in the western region can help the western region use computing resources faster, and bring upstream and downstream industries through the data center, which is conducive to promoting the economic development of the western region, so this is also An important measure that takes into account regional development. ?

The digital economy is becoming a key force in reorganizing global factor resources, reshaping the global economic structure, and changing the global competitive landscape. Computing power has become an indispensable resource like water, electricity, gas, etc. "Data from the East and Count from the West" is a crucial national project launched by our country under the background of "new infrastructure"; it can not only give full play to the advantages of climate, energy, environment and other aspects of the western region, but also help my country's data The center's realization of low-carbon, green and sustainable development will inject new momentum into building a digital China and promoting high-quality economic development.