news

a few days ago, when the big data expo was held in guiyang, an interesting scene appeared at the venue: speakers from qinghai, inner mongolia, and xinjiang all said "it's cool where we are". the audience smiled knowingly. the most contagious was of course the host country, who kept saying "cool guiyang". when you are in guiyang, you can enjoy this "coolness".

in the digital economy era, keeping cool is important.

gao wen, an academician of the chinese academy of engineering, mentioned three sentences he often said at this meeting:build a "computing power network" like building a power grid, and operate the "computing power network" like operating the internet, so that users can use computing power as conveniently as using electricity.

academician gao wen is the director of pengcheng laboratory. located in shenzhen, the laboratory undertakes many major national strategic scientific research tasks and is also the location of the "china computing network national general dispatching center".

the scheduling of computing power is large-scale. for example, the computing power demand in hong kong can be connected to the computing power cluster in shaoguan, guangdong through this scheduling center, and then connected to the national computing power network. in the end, it may be a server in guizhou that performs calculations for engineers in hong kong.

let’s describe the goal as a very specific scenario: power sockets have become a must-have on our desks. in the near future, there will be an additional “computing power socket.” users don’t have to worry about where the computing power comes from or where the calculation takes place. they just need to pay for it and use it as they please.

the arrival of computing power is incredible. we can at least understand three things:

first, computing power will be as important to our daily life and work as running water and electricity. computing power, as the name implies, is "computing ability". nowadays, computing power is the support for everything from mobile phones and computers to industrial internet, autonomous driving, telemedicine, and artificial intelligence. computing power is both a hardware capability and a service capability. in a word, computing power is the new quality of productivity in the digital economy era.

secondly, computing power is relatively power-consuming, so green electricity is important, and coolness is important. data centers are big energy consumers. currently, the power consumption of data centers nationwide accounts for about 3% to 4% of the total electricity consumption in the whole society, or even more. the industry says, "the end of computing power is electricity." therefore, it is crucial to save energy and reduce emissions, and coordinate the integrated development of computing power and green electricity. it is also inevitable to build data centers in places with cool climates as much as possible.

third, computing power needs to be networked. the scattered computing power supply cannot meet the computing power demand that can be found everywhere. only by connecting into a network can efficient supply be formed and more demand can be stimulated.

since the beginning of 2022, my country has launched the "east data west computing" project, and promoted the construction of eight national hub nodes and ten national data center clusters in the beijing-tianjin-hebei, yangtze river delta, guangdong-hong kong-macao greater bay area, chengdu-chongqing, inner mongolia, guizhou, gansu, ningxia and other places.by sending some of the data from the east to the west where it is cooler, land costs are lower, and there is more green electricity, the country's overall computing power has been taken a step forward.

since the end of 2023, all parties have been accelerating the construction of a national integrated computing network. this is an expansion and deepening of "east data west computing", dedicated to promoting efficient and coordinated scheduling of computing resources across the country, and ultimately providing the whole society withpublic computing services that are inclusive, easy to use, low-cost, green and secure.

is the computing power socket on your desk installed? it is not easy to do this new thing well. three sets of relationships must be grasped:

the invisible hand and the visible hand, no matter which one is used alone, this task cannot be done well. the state should make overall plans, and enterprises should make independent innovations. both government power and market mechanisms are indispensable.

key technologies and key markets need to be deeply cultivated, and cross-regional and cross-departmental collaboration is needed. collaboration is the key to the key between the eastern, central and western regions, between large, medium and small cities, between computing power, data and algorithms, between computing power and green electricity, between computing power development and security, etc.

everything in the computing power field has a strong growth potential, and a large number of participants are pouring in. it is good to be enthusiastic, but we must not lose our composure. orderly development is the only way. only by paying attention to both "quantity" and "quality" can we improve efficiency. how to resolutely avoid blind and disorderly competition between regions is a test for the industry.

throughout the history of human civilization, from the agricultural revolution to the industrial revolution and then to the information revolution,each round breeds new infrastructure. from the perspective of the world today,computing power has become a country’s core productivity and one of the main arenas for major countries to compete in science and technology. “cultivating a national integrated technology and data market” is an important requirement put forward in the “decision” of the third plenary session of the 18th cpc central committee.

it seems that having more "computing power sockets" next to the "power sockets" will no longer be a novelty sooner or later.

(text丨cctv special commentator yang yu)

(cctv news client)