On August 17, reporters from the central planning and Construction Commission of Guangdong, Tianjin and Chengdu and the national information technology development center of Gansu Province and the Ministry of information technology of the people’s Republic of China issued a joint notice to the central planning and Development Bureau of Guangdong, Tianjin and Chengdu, and the national information technology development center of Gansu Province, Tianjin and Chengdu, and the Ministry of information technology of the people’s Republic of China. The overall layout design of the national integrated big data center system was completed, and the project of “counting from the east to the west” was officially launched.
building a national computing network system
The so-called “East number West calculation”, “number” refers to data, “calculation” refers to computational power. Generally speaking, it refers to the flow of data from the east to the West for storage and calculation, just like the South-to-North Water Transfer and west to East power transmission.
Similar to water conservancy in the agricultural era, electric power and computing power in the industrial era, it has become an important infrastructure for national economic development. The high technology department of the national development and Reform Commission explained that computing power is the core productivity of the digital economy. Up to now, the scale of China’s data center has reached 5 million standard racks, and the computing power has reached 130 eflops (1.3 trillion floating-point operations per second). With the comprehensive and continuous penetration of digital technology into all fields of economy and society, the demand for computing power in the whole society is still very urgent, and it is expected to grow rapidly at a rate of more than 20% every year.
However, at present, most of China’s data centers are located in the eastern region. Due to the increasing shortage of land, energy and other resources, it is difficult to sustain the large-scale development of data centers in the East. Western China is rich in resources, especially renewable energy, and has the potential to develop data centers to meet the computing power needs of the East. Therefore, we should integrate the layout from a national perspective, optimize the allocation of resources and improve the efficiency of resource use.
At the end of 2020, the national development and Reform Commission, the central network and information office, the Ministry of industry and information technology and the National Energy Administration jointly issued the guiding opinions on accelerating the construction of a coordinated innovation system for national integrated big data centers, which proposed that by 2025, data centers across the country will form an infrastructure integration pattern with reasonable layout and green intensity. In May 2021, the above-mentioned four departments officially issued the implementation plan of the computing hub of the collaborative innovation system of the national integrated big data center (the implementation plan), which clearly proposed the layout of the national hub nodes of the national computing network, started the implementation of the “East West computing” project, and built the national computing network system.
eight hubs have different positioning
The high technology department of the national development and Reform Commission said that the positioning of the eight nodes in the construction of National Computing hub nodes is not the same.
The four nodes in Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Ningxia should build a national non real-time computing power support base, which is positioned to continuously improve the service quality and utilization efficiency of computing power, give full play to its resource advantages, consolidate the basic support such as network, and actively undertake the non real-time computing power needs such as back-end processing, offline analysis, storage and backup all over the country.
The four nodes of Beijing Tianjin Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Dawan district and Chengdu Chongqing should serve the implementation needs of major regional development strategies, be positioned to further coordinate the layout of data centers in and around the city, realize the coordination and sustainability of large-scale computing power deployment and land, energy, water, electricity and other resources, optimize the supply structure of data centers and expand the space for computing power growth.
The national hub node of the national integrated computing power network is the backbone node of China’s computing power network. Within the national hub node, several data center clusters will be gradually planned and developed.
From December 2021 to February 2022, the national development and Reform Commission successively approved these eight hub nodes and 10 data center clusters, and required to establish a high-speed data center direct connection network between clusters.
The 10 clusters are: Helingeer cluster located in Inner Mongolia hub, Gui’an cluster of Guizhou hub, Qingyang cluster of Gansu hub, Zhongwei cluster of Ningxia hub, Zhangjiakou cluster of Beijing Tianjin Hebei hub, Yangtze River Delta ecological green integration demonstration area cluster and Wuhu cluster of Yangtze River Delta hub, Shaoguan cluster of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao hub, Tianfu cluster of Chengdu Chongqing hub Chongqing cluster.
The high technology department of the national development and Reform Commission stressed that in order to resolutely avoid the blind development of data centers, at the current initial stage, 10 data center clusters have delimited the physical boundary and defined the development goals of green energy conservation and shelf availability. For example, the average shelf rate of data centers in the cluster should reach at least 65%, and the utilization rate of renewable energy should be significantly improved.
Under the guidance and requirements of the “double carbon” goal, the energy conservation and emission reduction of the data center is imperative. According to the previously released implementation plan, by 2025, the average power utilization efficiency (PUE) of new large and super large data centers in China will be reduced to less than 1.3, the national hub nodes will be further reduced to less than 1.25, and the green and low-carbon grade will reach more than 4a.
The pue requirements of 8 computing network hubs and 10 data center clusters are different.
The pue level of Zhangjiakou cluster, Shaoguan cluster, Yangtze River Delta ecological green integrated development demonstration area cluster, Wuhu cluster, Tianfu cluster and Chongqing cluster should be controlled within 1.25. The pue level of helingel cluster, Gui’an cluster, Zhongwei cluster and Qingyang cluster should be controlled below 1.2.
According to the green data center white paper 2020 issued by China Institute of electronic technology standardization, in recent years, the energy efficiency level of China’s data centers has been continuously improved, and the average power utilization rate (PUE) of super large data centers is 1.46. Some excellent green data centers have taken the lead in the world, with pue up to 1.2-1.3. Overall, the total energy consumption of China’s data centers is still significantly higher than the world average.
effectively drive the upstream and downstream investment of the industry
How many industrial opportunities will the construction of “counting East and counting West” drive?
Some institutions estimate that the annual investment volume of the “counting East and counting West” project will reach hundreds of billions of yuan, and the pulling effect on relevant industries will reach 1:8. The high technology department of the national development and Reform Commission also said that the data center industrial chain includes not only traditional civil engineering, but also it equipment manufacturing, information and communication, basic software and green energy supply. It has a long industrial chain, wide coverage and large driving effect. Through the construction of computing hub and data center cluster, it will effectively drive the upstream and downstream investment of the industry.
(the pictures in this article are all from the official WeChat official account of the national development and Reform Commission, produced by the national development and Reform Commission’s high technology department, and the magazine “China strategic emerging industries”).
