Three forces overlap and changes in computing power productivity are taking place

Since the birth of computing power, people have placed high hopes on it. Whether it was AlphaGo, the initial application in the field of artificial intelligence, or the popular computing network today, computing power has obviously become the driving force behind the digital economy. "important engine" of development.

In a sense, computing power is now in the transition period from points and lines to networks. Computing power is the core productivity in the digital economy era. Just like steam engines, electricity, etc. in previous industrial revolutions, the great development of computing power will transform productivity and production relations, and this is based on a ubiquitous computing power network.

Around the computing power network, the market has mainly formed three forces: computing power service providers, operators and Internet manufacturers. Different resource endowments determine the entry ideas of different types of manufacturers, which in turn creates Given the different industry driving forces, who will decide the direction of the computing power service network?

1. The "highlight moment" of computing power

Computing power is rapidly developing into emerging digital industries such as big data, cloud computing, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and network security. An important support for development is closely related to the development of digital core industries such as the Internet industry, electronic information manufacturing industry, and digital technology service industry.

From 1997 when the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated chess master Kasparov, to April 2019 when the AI ​​e-sports team OpenAI Five competed with a human team in "dota", 2:0 Completely defeated the world champion OG team. The victory of AI also marks the "highlight" of computing power.

Thanks to the efforts of scientific research staff, AI has been continuously endowed with stronger computing power. It can process large amounts of data through computing power several times stronger than that of humans, and has become the first in electronic technology. Take OpenAI Five, which defeated the world champion in competitive games, as an example. At that time, OpenAI Five's daily training was equivalent to 250 years of simulation experience, and its training time and computing power were estimated to far exceed that of ordinary AI.

With the popularity of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence content automatic generation technology (AIGC) based on large models, big data, and high computing power has been promoted as a hot search, thus opening up the market. The imagination space of computing power requirements.

Data shows that the total computing power consumption of ChatGPT is about 3640PF-days (that is, if it is calculated one quadrillion times per second, it takes 3640 days to calculate), and it requires 7~8 investment scales A data center with 3 billion and 500P computing power can support operation.

In fact, in recent years, computing power technology has gradually penetrated into all aspects of life, and various integrated applications have emerged.

The construction of computing power infrastructure is an important "base" for releasing data advantages and promoting the innovative development of the digital economy. It has become a hot area for promoting the development of digital economies in various places and playing a role in stimulating investment.

2. The key lies in the computing power network

The computing power network uses new network technology to connect distributed computing power nodes such as clouds, edges, and terminals, dynamically and in real time Perceive the status of computing resources and conduct overall allocation and scheduling according to business needs.

In the future, obtaining computing power will be as convenient and cheap as obtaining water and electricity. The computing power network will become the iconic infrastructure of this era of digital economy and intelligence.

At the beginning of 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Central Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the National Energy Administration jointly issued a notice agreeing to establish the construction projects in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Eight places, including Chengdu, Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu, and Ningxia, have launched the construction of national computing hub nodes, and have planned 10 national data center clusters.

At this point, the overall layout design of the national integrated big data center system has been completed, and the "Eastern Data and Western Counting" project has been officially launched.

""East and West" for the first time has upgraded computing power resources to the level of basic resources such as water, electricity, and gas. From the Gaojia strategy Plan computing power standards from a high-level perspective and build an integrated computing power system.

The “Counting in the East and Counting in the West” project has just started. Different opinions are colliding with each other on how to build a computing power network.

The core of the power grid is electricity, and the core of the computing network should also be computing power. Taking the analogy of the three major projects of "West-to-East Electricity Transmission", "South-to-North Water Diversion" and "West-to-East Gas Transmission", users The production resources used are electricity, water and natural gas. We build bridges and roads, divert water and open canals, and build high-voltage power towers and natural gas pipelines. The fundamental purpose is to bring the production resources closer to the use scenarios, so that they can be used more widely and become a popular choice in various industries. Direct or indirect infrastructure provides endless power for economic development.

The reason why the importance of the network has increased is precisely because the network does not match the development of computing power. In the early days, the power network also needed to build pathways to thousands of households. Today, in addition to Electricity suppliers, no one cares about the electricity transmission network anymore, but only about the electricity itself.

At the 2022 China Computing Power Development Seminar, He Baohong, director of the Cloud Computing and Big Data Research Institute of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, mentioned that by analogy with power grids and water power grids, the computing power industry also needs Build a national computing network with computing as the center and the Internet as the carrier.

Among them, we need to pay attention to the construction of different types of computing power, including general computing power, high-performance computing power and intelligent computing power for the AI ​​field; in addition, we must also fully consider the computing power Resource description, management, scheduling, allocation and other factors to achieve intelligent and flexible effective supply.

In the "Eastern Digital and Western Calculation" project, the core production resource is computing power, and network services rely on computing power to exist.

Therefore, among the three forces in the market, whoever can make computing power evolve towards the infrastructure positioning of electricity, water and natural gas, with a low enough threshold and wide enough application, can represent The future of computing power networks.

3. The three forces belong to the origin of computing power

If we break down the roles of computing power service providers, operators and Internet manufacturers in the industry chain, we can Clearly see the industrial landscape centered on computing power.

The core of computing power service providers focuses on computing power itself, and pays more attention to building diverse and integrated computing power to match the increasingly differentiated demands of customers. It is affected by the external environment and the evolution of the industry itself. Impact, pure intelligent computing and supercomputing cannot meet customer needs. System engineering of deep integration and scheduling of ABC (artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing) is the next focus.

The advantage of operators lies in the network. A robust network is the best carrier of computing power. Operators are also the best assistant to computing power service providers. At the same time, operators have in-depth regional capabilities. The layout of personnel at the county level can make the scope of computing power radiation wider. When computing power is sufficiently popular and easy to use, it will greatly accelerate the development of computing power service networks.

Take China Mobile's computing power network construction as an example. China Mobile divides it into "three steps". It is currently in the first step of ubiquitous collaboration, and the key focus is resources. Mobile to meet the one-stop activation needs of most users; the second step is to build the "Eastern Digital and Western Computing" computing network brain, the core of which lies in efficient orchestration, scheduling, and integrated management; the last step is to achieve the optimal allocation of resources for the integration of computing and network symbiosis , is to let the data find the most appropriate location, avoid wasting computing power, and maximize its utility.

Most Internet service providers start from their own business scenarios and have excellent technical accumulation in certain types of businesses. On the contrary, in some low-level infrastructure fields, their starting point is also their own business. Instead of taking a global perspective, in national-level projects such as "numbering from the east to the west", Internet manufacturers are more suitable for single-point breakthroughs and demand guidance.

In the long run, computing power service providers have grasped the core of computing power and are closer to the essence of the “Eastern and Western Calculation” project. What enterprise customers ultimately need is computing power. Its industrial supporting facilities need to be explored in commercial development.

"Digital from the east and data from the west" did not change the way of data transmission, but only changed the direction of data transmission. From an industry perspective, we did not see the factors that reversed the trend of operator pipelines. The positioning of power as the main force and network as the supplement will not change. The network needs to change to meet the evolution direction of computing power and deliver computing power to where users need it.

Internet manufacturers’ e-commerce, games, search and other businesses also rely on computing power service providers. The relationship between the two is similar to “production determines consumption”. The underlying technological innovation of computing power service providers comes first. Only the upper-level application innovations of Internet manufacturers can be achieved.

As the second growth curve of Internet manufacturers, cloud computing is essentially another form of computing power service provider. When standing at the height of national infrastructure, computing power requires more bottom-level computing power. Thinking, bottom-level thinking determines the superstructure.

Taken together, computing power service providers will become the core role of the “Eastern Digital and Western Calculation” project. Of course, the “Eastern Digital and Western Calculation” project requires the support of different types of players throughout the industry chain. Only through collaboration can we make breakthroughs and establish an industrial model based on computing power, which will help clarify the industrial structure and industry division of labor as soon as possible and promote the steady development of my country's "digital computing in the east and computing in the west" project.

However, what needs to be noted is that there are still many problems that need to be solved in the "Eastern Numbers and Western Numbers" project, such as the universal supply of computing power.

Computing power is still a "luxury product". Computing power network has become the optimal solution to provide inclusive computing power, and may become the iconic infrastructure of the intelligent era.

Currently, computing power is a luxury product for most companies, scientific research institutes, and individuals, and has not become a basic resource that benefits the general public.

At the same time, through the standardization of computing power and the access of heterogeneous computing power, we can avoid excessive concentration of computing power. The current unified management and scheduling technology of multi-cloud computing power is relatively mature, but how to shield it? Due to the differences in computing power among clouds, the standardization of computing power requires further coordination and advancement.

In addition, the scheduling of computing power is also a difficult problem. On the one hand, computing power scheduling must ensure the convenience of using computing power so that users can conveniently use computing power provided by different regions and companies. computing power resources; on the other hand, computing power scheduling should support the automation and intelligence of computing power resource allocation, ensure the reasonable distribution of computing power needs, increase the utilization rate of computing power resources, and enhance user experience.

By grasping the main contradiction of the computing power service network, other problems will be easily solved. The development of the power industry can be used as a reference.

For example, power grid companies have standardized electricity and simplified the complexity of the process. Computing service providers can also provide standardized and refined management instead of simply upgrading and transforming a certain business. .

The computing power service system is not simply about providing computing power. The focus is on complete service capabilities. Focusing on the construction of the computing power service system and ecological construction, the entire industry chain needs to work together and start from the ecological perspective. , feed back to the ecology, and create a healthy positive cycle computing power service business model.

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