Matters:
According to Xinhua news agency, the national development and Reform Commission, the central network information office, the Ministry of industry and information technology and the National Energy Administration recently jointly issued a document agreeing to start the construction of National Computing hub nodes in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Dawan District, Chengdu and Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu and Ningxia, and planned 10 national data center clusters such as Zhangjiakou cluster. So far, the overall layout design of the national integrated big data center system has been completed, and the “counting from the east to the west” project has been officially launched.
Ping An View:
The energy consumption pressure of China’s data center is huge, so it is imperative to optimize the spatial layout. Data center is the carrier of digital economy and has been built rapidly in recent years. According to the calculation of the Planning Institute of the Ministry of environmental protection, the rack scale of China’s data center will reach 5.436 million in 2021 (converted into 2.5kW standard rack), with a year-on-year increase of 27%; Electricity consumption accounts for 2.6% of the total electricity consumption of the whole society, and carbon emission accounts for about 1.14% of the country. According to the requirements of the 14th five year plan for digital economy development of the State Council, the contribution rate of core industries of digital economy to GDP will increase from 7.8% in 2020 to 10% in 2025, and the digital economy will enter a period of comprehensive expansion. The development of digital economy is inseparable from the construction of data center, but it also brings great pressure to energy conservation and carbon emission reduction. The Planning Institute of the Ministry of environmental protection predicts that in 2025, the rack scale of China’s data center will reach 7.59 million, an increase of 40% over 2021; The total energy consumption increased by 62% compared with 2021, accounting for about 4% of the electricity consumption of the whole society; Carbon emissions account for nearly 2% of the country. During the “14th five year plan” period, Hebei, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Zhejiang provinces and cities had the largest rack scale, total energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, and the sum of the five regions accounted for about half of the country. Since the energy consumption itself is linked to the number and depth of racks, it is difficult to do anything from the power supply side. On the premise of rectifying the stock by means of layout optimization, try to layout the data center in areas with good conditions such as suitable climate and abundant green energy, so as to reduce carbon emissions, and the layout of “counting East and counting West” comes from this.
“Counting from the east to the west” can guide data center manufacturers to shift their layout focus to the western region. In consideration of previous policy guidance and operators’ own operating costs, some manufacturers have established data centers in areas with friendly environment and energy consumption, such as Zhangjiakou, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Xinjiang, Ningxia and Gansu. However, due to the lack of network bandwidth and related accessories, the capacity utilization rate has been low, especially Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, Zhongwei, Ningxia Zhangbei, Hebei and Karamay, Xinjiang, which have large-scale data center construction, still have no direct connection point construction and are far away from the backbone network. The cost of laying special lines is high and the time delay is large, which seriously affects the user experience. According to the layout of the national integrated big data center system, the construction of National Computing hub nodes will be started in Beijing Tianjin Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Bay area, Chengdu Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu and Ningxia, and 10 national data center clusters including Zhangjiakou cluster will be planned, including 1 in Beijing Tianjin Hebei, 2 in Yangtze River Delta, 1 in Guangdong Hong Kong Macao and 2 in Chengdu Chongqing, Other hubs are set up with a cluster. High speed direct network connection is adopted between clusters, and data-oriented computing power dispatching is carried out to form an integrated computing power network throughout the country. After the construction of corresponding nodes, the aforementioned network transmission and supporting problems can be effectively solved.
There are great differences in the positioning of the eight core nodes: 1) Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Ningxia should build a national non real-time computing power guarantee base. It aims to continuously improve the service quality and utilization efficiency of computing power, give full play to its resource advantages, consolidate the basic guarantee such as network, and actively undertake the non real-time computing power needs such as background processing, offline analysis, storage and backup all over the country. The four nodes of Beijing Tianjin Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Bay area and Chengdu Chongqing should serve the needs of the implementation of major regional development strategies. In the reply letter of major hubs, the national development and Reform Commission clearly requires that the shelf rate of each node shall not be less than 65%; There are differences in energy consumption requirements. The pue of nodes in central and western regions shall not be higher than 1.2 (Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Guizhou), and the pue of nodes in Beijing Tianjin Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao and Chengdu Chongqing shall be controlled below 1.25.
In terms of function, the data center cluster focuses on the “cloud” analysis of large-scale data, and the data center to end delay is controlled at 20 milliseconds; As a high-performance and edge data center, the data center within the city focuses on developing real-time services such as high-frequency trading in the financial market, virtual reality / augmented reality (VR / AR), ultra-high definition video, Internet of vehicles and so on. The center-to-end delay should be controlled within 10 milliseconds.
Investment suggestion: from the introduction of the implementation plan of the computing hub of the collaborative innovation system of the national integrated big data center in May 2021 to the recent approval of all 8 hub nodes and 10 clusters, it means that the “computing from the east to the west” will be implemented from the top-level planning. The implementation of “counting from the east to the west” will promote the rational layout of data centers, improve the overall computing power level of the country, effectively improve the data processing capacity, give play to the key role of data elements in the development of China’s digital economy, and promote the sustainable and vigorous development of China’s digital economy. We can see that the state has very high requirements for energy consumption of computing power centers, the industrial chain of green data centers will fully benefit, and efficient electronic information equipment and independent software and hardware products will be widely used. Recommend Unisplendour Corporation Limited(000938) , Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co.Ltd(000977) , Dawning Information Industry Co.Ltd(603019) , Business-Intelligence Of Oriental Nations Corporation Ltd(300166) , and pay attention to Shanghai Athub Co.Ltd(603881) , Guangdong Aofei Data Technology Co.Ltd(300738) .
Risk tips: 1) the progress of policy implementation is less than expected; 2) The development of digital economy is less than expected; 3) The risk of intensified market competition.
