As the core infrastructure of digital economy, data center is ushering in a new round of development opportunities.
The project of “counting from the east to the west” was officially launched recently. It is planned to build a national hub node of the national integrated computing network in 8 places: Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, the Great Bay area of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, Chengdu and Chongqing, Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Ningxia, and plan 10 clusters of national data centers. Both upstream and downstream enterprises of China’s data center industrial chain are expected to benefit.
Several data center insiders told reporters that the impact of counting from the east to the west is long-term, which will increase the layout and utilization rate of the western data center and directly stimulate the construction investment of the communication network.
At the same time, challenges and opportunities coexist. Some analysts believe that although the western region has advantages in resources and energy consumption, there are still deficiencies in soft environment such as talents. In addition, the construction of super large-scale data center depends on a large amount of capital investment, and there are also technical difficulties in construction, operation, maintenance and management.
data center is a big business
The so-called “East number West calculation”, “number” refers to data, “calculation” refers to computational power. Generally speaking, transmitting the data from the east to the West for calculation and processing can be understood as the “South-to-North Water Transfer” project in the era of digital economy.
According to the research data of Kezhi consulting, at present, 31 provinces (districts and cities) in China have all kinds of data center deployment, mainly concentrated in the first tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen and their surrounding areas, with less distribution in the central and western regions.
By the end of 2020, IDC resources in Beijing and surrounding areas, Shanghai and surrounding areas, Guangzhou and Shenzhen and surrounding areas accounted for 23.3%, 16.4% and 13.7% respectively. The development of IDC market in the central and western regions is still in the early stage, and IDC resources account for less than 30% of the national total.
The head of the high technology department of the national development and Reform Commission pointed out: “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 eastern region. While Western China is rich in resources, especially renewable energy, and has the potential to develop data centers and meet the computing needs of the eastern region. Therefore, we should give full play to the advantages of China’s system and mechanism and take a national perspective The overall layout, optimize the allocation of resources and improve the efficiency of resource use. “
Several insiders of the data center told the reporter of the science and Innovation Board daily that the impact of counting from the east to the west is long-term, and the layout and utilization rate of the western data center will be increased in the future .
According to the national planning objectives, by the end of the 14th Five Year Plan period, the proportion of the total number of data centers in the East will decrease from 60% to about 50%, and the proportion of data centers in the West will increase from 10% to about 25% .
Compared with the East, the advantage of the West lies in its vast land and low-carbon new energy such as photovoltaic hydropower. Pan Helin, member of the information and communication economy expert committee of the Ministry of industry and information technology and executive director of the Digital Economy Research Institute of Central South University of economics and law, analyzed that the energy industry in the west, such as photovoltaic and wind power, had more surplus in the West and consumed too much in the East, so the data centers in the central and western regions can rely on the cheap energy supply in the central and western regions.
giants and core listed companies
In recent years, under the guidance of some national and local policies, many enterprises are increasingly locating their data centers in the central and western regions with sufficient power resources and suitable climate, so as to reduce costs and increase efficiency. , such as HUAWEI, Kwai Fu, Alibaba and Ucloud Technology Co.Ltd(688158) , all choose to build data centers in Inner Mongolia.
Fu Dongming, deputy technical director of the Ministry of construction and planning, told SciDev daily that ucloud Ucloud Technology Co.Ltd(688158) closely followed the policy and invested in the construction of two super large data center bases in Wulanchabu, Inner Mongolia and Qingpu, Shanghai in the Yangtze River Delta. The first phase of Wulanchabu cloud computing center was officially put into operation in September 2021, and Qingpu cloud computing center will also be put into operation this year. The two data centers belong to the National Computing hub node, with east-west layout and collaborative linkage, which greatly improves the quality and efficiency of computing power.
Qingcloud Technologies Corp(688316) said that the procurement of cloud data center will be consistent with the national strategy. It is planned to fully migrate the new offline data computing and storage demand nodes to the West and practice “computing from the east to the west”.
The person in charge of the volcanic engine under byte beat responded that is strengthening the talent training and recruitment of the western data center, as well as the upstream and downstream industrial chain construction of the western data center , including the industrial chain and supply chain construction of data center infrastructure, data center related consumables, servers / switches and other spare parts. in the future, more consideration will be given to the location of data centers. In areas rich in clean energy such as wind energy and Cecep Solar Energy Co.Ltd(000591) , , the utilization rate of renewable energy can reach 100%. And explore new technologies and products such as green energy and low energy consumption, and give priority to environmental factors in the design and construction of the data center.
Tencent also takes the western data center as the construction focus. The relevant person in charge of Tencent cloud told the reporter of science and Innovation Board daily that Tencent has layout in Guizhou, Beijing Tianjin Hebei, Chengdu and Chongqing and other hub nodes, including Gui’an seven star data center, Tencent Western cloud computing data center, Tencent Huailai ruibei and Dongyuan data centers, Shanghai Qingpu data center, etc.
Among them, the Tencent Western cloud computing data center phase II project under construction covers an area of 107 Mu and a construction area of 74000 square meters. The construction was officially started in April 2020. It is planned to build the first tbase Park of Tencent in Southwest China. After the overall completion of , it will have the computing and storage capacity of 200000 servers, Become the largest single data center in Western China .
Overview of the layout of some Internet and cloud computing enterprise data centers
With the full launch of “counting from the east to the west”, IDC manufacturers with business layout in the western region will focus on benefiting in the future. at present, China’s well-known third-party IDC operators include Wanguo data, Century Internet, Beijing Sinnet Technology Co.Ltd(300383) , Shanghai Athub Co.Ltd(603881) , Guangdong Aofei Data Technology Co.Ltd(300738) , Shanghai Baosight Software Co.Ltd(600845) and .
Among them, Guangdong Aofei Data Technology Co.Ltd(300738) is the leader of data center in Southern China, maintaining good relations with big internet customers such as Ali, Kwai Fu and Tencent. Beijing Sinnet Technology Co.Ltd(300383) deeply cultivate the first tier cities, have a large-scale layout in Beijing and Shanghai, and be responsible for operating the Beijing regional cloud service of Amazon cloud technology; The data center business of Shanghai Athub Co.Ltd(603881) started from Hangzhou and Shanghai, and has been deployed in data centers such as Zhangbei in Hebei, Fangshan in Beijing, Nantong in Jiangsu, Heyuan in Guangdong and Wulanchabu in Inner Mongolia, cooperating closely with Alibaba.
the scale of network construction will be larger than that of data center
“Counting from the east to the west” essentially solves the contradiction between supply and demand of computing power. On the one hand, the eastern region has a large application demand, but the energy consumption index is tight and the power cost is high, so it is very difficult to develop the data center on a large scale; On the other hand, the western region has vast land, rich renewable energy and suitable climate, which is suitable for the construction of data center clusters.
However, was limited by the bottleneck of small network bandwidth and high cost of inter provincial data transmission. Previously, the western data center could not effectively meet the application demand of the East . Therefore, the key to “counting from the east to the west” lies in how to build a national collaborative “computing power network”.
A data center insider said that if the data in the east of should be transmitted to the West for calculation, it will inevitably drive a series of network construction. In the future, the scale of network construction will be larger than that of the data center itself, and the new and old infrastructure can drive .
Guoxin communications pointed out that “East digital West computing” will strengthen the connection of network facilities, speed up the opening of data direct connection channels between the East and the west, and build a number of “East digital West computing” demonstration lines, which is expected to drive the procurement demand of network equipment and increase the demand for infrastructure such as optical fiber and cable. It is suggested to pay attention to the contribution of the construction of direct connection network between the East and the west to the business increment of ICT and optical fiber and cable manufacturers.
In addition, the field of data center content distribution network (CDN) is also noteworthy. The relevant person in charge of volcanic engine disclosed that a large number of CDN nodes have been deployed throughout the country, which can provide transmission acceleration services for enterprises and users in the East and West. In the future, it will actively promote the interconnection with other data centers.
In addition to the communication network, other upstream and downstream industrial chains of the data center are expected to benefit.
Some people in the cloud computing industry said that the demand core of “computing from the east to the west” in the short term is based on general computing power. In the long run, it should be a model of collaborative computing power and multiple computing power, which will bring new opportunities to many Chinese Enterprises involved in heterogeneous computing and accelerated computing . At the same time, companies driven by technical capabilities will receive more attention and have better growth opportunities. They can do a lot of application development around “number” and “calculation” based on the ecology of this large platform. From a deeper perspective, the past model of Internet companies providing computing power and services may change .
A brokerage analyst told the scidev.net Daily: the East West calculation is also a part of the digital economy and belongs to the underlying infrastructure. At present, science and technology giants at home and abroad are increasing the layout of computing power and data construction. In addition, China’s recently promulgated plans and policies, there will be greater development space for the track related to computing power and data flow.
“Through the East digital West computing project, we can better plan and layout the data center, optimize local resource allocation and supply and demand, improve China’s overall computing power level, and promote the better and faster development of digital economy. In terms of investment, the more intuitive IDC industrial chain will benefit directly, including IDC, optical module, optical communication, temperature control facilities, ICT equipment, etc. The leading enterprises of each track can keep their attention. “
Pan Helin also pointed out that IDC construction related enterprises, including server components, communication service providers, server chips, storage and systems, as well as basic data industries, such as data storage and processing, data circulation enterprises and data traders . These industries belong to the upper and lower industrial chains of data centers and will benefit from “counting from the East and the west”.
Xu Qifan, expert of whale platform think tank and big data analyst of Xinfeng real estate, also believes that “counting from the east to the west” will directly benefit IDC platform providers, electromechanical equipment providers, temperature control manufacturers, ICT manufacturers and data service providers, including platform manufacturers who have the opportunity to participate in the construction of national integrated data center, so as to provide power for the construction of national integrated data center Temperature control equipment manufacturers, etc.
Another analyst suggested that counting from the east to the West would drive the development of high-performance chips. Capital securities also said in the research report that the increase of data processing capacity is bound to reverse stimulate the data processing speed, and the demand for high-performance computing chips such as CPU and GPU is expected to continue to increase.
drive green energy conservation and double carbon target technology breakthrough
The realization of “counting from the east to the west” is a systematic subject. Due to the long industrial chain and large investment scale, there are still many problems to be solved in order to truly form a national integrated computing network.
Pan Helin analysis, the first is the challenge of funds. The construction of data center needs to broaden the source of construction funds . The second is the use frequency of the data center, some data centers are located in a relatively partial area and far away from the computing power demand area, which may lead to insufficient resource call and low use efficiency . In addition, the construction of communication network is also a major challenge. The data center needs to break the distance limit to transmit computing power. Therefore, the network response should be further improved.
Fu Dongming told the reporter of the science and Innovation Board daily that the “counting from the east to the west” project is a grand layout at the national level, which has clear requirements on the pue, shelf availability, renewable energy utilization and other important indicators of the cluster data center in the national hub node of computing power. At the same time, it also brings challenges. The data center in the eight national hub node cluster of big computing power will face higher requirements for green energy conservation and realizing the dual carbon goal, which requires enterprises to accelerate the breakthrough at the level of technological innovation integration .
According to Fu Dongming, ucloud Ucloud Technology Co.Ltd(688158) has carried out in-depth research and development and reserves in the direction of innovative technology in the data center in advance. In 2021, ucloud Ucloud Technology Co.Ltd(688158) launched “Bailu” indirect evaporative cooling technology to help the data center significantly reduce pue.
Another data center expert believes that in the past two years, with the rapid development of cloud computing industry and the gradual implementation of new infrastructure policies, IDC market has ushered in an investment boom. However, due to the lack of new application support, supply has exceeded demand in a short time. Especially in terms of ICT hardware devices such as servers, the future growth still depends on user needs rather than policy driven .
A senior person who has been deeply involved in the field of cloud computing for a long time stressed that the start of the “counting from the east to the west” project may have a contraction effect on the industrial economy in some cases. ” the construction of super large-scale data center will centralize the service capacity, which means that the procurement and service behavior will be more centralized. This will have a greater adverse impact on integrators and local companies that used to rely on decentralized procurement mode. “
The source also pointed out that, “In addition to the financial challenges, there are also great technical difficulties in the construction, operation, maintenance and management of large-scale data centers. In terms of large business ecology, how to use the large platform is the key. These remote areas have the advantages of resources and energy consumption, but whether they can attract talents or not, and the construction of soft environment also needs to be considered .”
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