Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering , Founder of Alibaba Cloud , Wang Jian . Photo provided by the interviewee
computing power is known as the new productivity, and the digital age is calling for a high-efficiency "computing power network".
" East Digital and West Calculation " national project has been launched for more than 8 months, and is committed to orderly guiding the intensive computing power demand in the east to the west, so that data elements can flow across the domain, thereby opening up the "number" artery and weaving a network of computing power across the country. According to the planning blueprint, this not only alleviates the problem of energy tension in the east, but also opens up a new development path for the west, and at the same time achieves the green goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality.
What technological breakthroughs are needed for "East Digital and West Calculation", how to take into account the improvement of computing power, energy conservation and emission reduction, and increase the layout of data centers, and how to avoid disorderly competition? In this regard, Wang Jian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and founder of Alibaba Cloud, said in an exclusive interview with a reporter from the Beijing News Beike Finance that the strategy of realizing the "east number and west calculation" should be made in technical breakthroughs so that the data in the east can truly achieve "west calculation".
Talking about avoiding rushing to layout data centers, Wang Jian said that it should not be built for the sake of building data centers. Many places have built data centers into real estate projects, and some data centers’ actual business is “rental”. Under the "East and West Computing" strategy, the entire data center should be made a computer in the cloud computing era and realize cloud computing in the strict sense.
"East Data" realizes "Western Calculation" , requires technical breakthrough
Beijing News Shell Finance : How to realize "East Data West Calculation"?
Wang Jian : West-to-east power transmission and east-east calculation are both manifestations of the imbalance between the east and west of my country. There are many energy in the western part of my country and many data in the eastern part of the eastern part. Wu Hequan Academician once said at the 2022 China Computing Power Conference that the "hot data" that requires real-time calculation is mainly in the east, and the west is mainly positioned to process some "cold data" and some local hot data that does not require real-time calculation. Therefore, "east numbers and west counts" are actually "east numbers and west counts".
From Academician Wu's words, we can think about a deep-seated question: Can we truly achieve "counting the east and counting the west" now? I think that energy distribution is the result of the 4.6 billion years of the earth, and we cannot change it, but the data is not certain. To truly achieve "counting the east and counting the west", it requires a very large technological breakthrough.
The current logic of "east data and west calculation" is to transfer eastern data to the west to calculate, but due to the existence of problems such as real-time calculation (note: a certain degree of delay in the transmission process will affect the user experience), we just store data in the west, because the cost there is relatively low, but only cold data that is not commonly used.
If you really achieve "counting the east and count the west", the data in the east should appear in the west. Traditional IT technology may not be able to do this and need to make technical breakthroughs. In other words, many "hot data" in the eastern region cannot move to the western region, and an important reason is that they do not have the ability to move out.
I think that doing cloud computing well can do this. At present, using cloud computing technology, it can also be managed thousands of kilometers away. Real cloud computing makes the difference between the east and the west relatively insignificant.
A very important application of cloud computing technology is that it is not subject to geographical restrictions and can control delays within a range that users can accept. For example, a user in the east buys things on Taobao. Traditionally, the data will be recorded in the east, but using the cloud computing system of the Feitian platform, the service can be provided in the west, so that the data will remain in the west, otherwise "the east counts the west counts the west counts" can only be "the east counts the west counts the west counts the west."
part data center like real estate projects, don’t build
Beijing News Beike Finance : Various industries and each user have diverse needs for computing power, and there are obvious differences. How can we make computing power simpler, easier and more convenient to use?
Wang Jian : In the past, the emergence of computers met individuals' needs for computing, making people's lives simpler, easier and more convenient.In the current digital economy era, individuals' demand for computing volume far exceeds the amount that a personal computer can provide. At this time, 10, 100 or even 10,000 computers may be needed to meet the computing demand, and the concept of computing power has emerged.
However, to achieve such computing power, simply adding one personal computer to another is not possible. If you want to use 100 machines to complete a thing, you must make up data in these 100 machines. How can it be simple and convenient to use? At this time, technical breakthroughs are needed to use cloud computing to make 100 computers work together into a supercomputer. For users, these 100 computers can be used like a computer, or 100% of them.
You should know that the reason why electricity exists is because electricity consumption is scaled up, but the static electricity generated by friction cannot generate the concept of "electricity". The same is true for computing power. I think the so-called "cloud computing" that cannot achieve economies of scale cannot be called cloud computing in the strict sense. How to make computing power simpler, easier and more convenient to use, in the final analysis, is to use cloud computing well. Of course, there are only a few top cloud computing companies in the world, and it may be one of the reasons that people have different understandings of cloud computing in the strict sense.
Beijing News Beike Finance: Various places have increased their investment in data centers. How should we strengthen the overall planning of top-level design and avoid rushing?
Wang Jian: The most basic unit in the data center is the rack. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology disclosed at the 2022 China Computing Power Conference in July this year that the total scale of data center racks in my country currently exceeds 5.9 million standard racks, and the server scale is about 20 million. However, half of these racks are empty at present, and the reasons behind this are worth pondering, and technology is also a key factor.
At present, many people’s understanding of cloud computing is to build a data center, then put servers in the data center, and more of them rent the data center space to different people, which is called cloud computing. In fact, this simple hosting is not a cloud computing in the strict sense. In the strict sense, cloud computing requires both a special software architecture and a service to meet user needs.
Many places have built data centers into real estate-like projects. Some data centers’ actual business is to “rental” and distribute the data center space to different customers. If the "East and West Computing" strategy is implemented, the technological revolution that the data center needs to complete is to use thousands of machines as a computer, that is, to make the entire data center a computer in the cloud computing era, and to realize cloud computing in the strict sense, which requires technical capabilities.
If you use the data center as real estate to build it, it will be useless to plan it. Therefore, from the beginning, we need to strengthen technical strategic planning and not build it in order to build a data center.
The ultimate goal of digital is to greatly reduce carbon emissions
Beijing News Beike Finance: The increase in computing power consumes a lot of energy, how to take into account energy conservation and emission reduction?
Wang Jian: My view on the contribution of computing power to dual carbon has always been "parafied". The real role of computing power is to improve the efficiency of the entire society. I have also said before that 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity in the digital age will generate the social value of 10 kilowatt-hour of electricity in the electrification era, which means that 10 kilowatt-hour of electricity was originally intended to be consumed, because computing power intervention may only consume 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity. Intelligence must be attributed to this ultimate goal. Intelligence that cannot reduce resource consumption is intrepid. This is the fundamental relationship between computing power and electricity.
Looking back at the carbon emission curve in the 20th century, we can see that the increase in carbon emissions is also due to the advancement of traditional technologies. Specifically, although many technologies can reduce carbon emissions locally, if technological advances simultaneously increase the capacity for resource consumption, carbon emissions will still be increased overall. From this point of view, without digitalization, carbon emissions may be higher. The ultimate goal of digitalization is to greatly reduce carbon emissions, which is the basis for fully realizing carbon neutrality with .
In the past, energy conservation was about reducing carbon emissions under the premise of increasing the absolute value of resource consumption. But as long as the absolute value increases, the relative reduction in carbon emissions becomes insignificant. I think the most important technical path to achieving the dual-carbon goal is digitalization. City Brain is this logic. This practice tells us that cities do not actually need so many resources to support. An important assumption of the city brain is that if this is a city driven by computing power, it may only require 10% of the original resources to allow the city to operate. In this way, we can reduce the absolute value of carbon emissions.
In terms of average personal electricity consumption, the United States far exceeds China, and the domestic electricity consumption of ordinary Chinese people is only one-sixth to one-tenth of that of the United States. Using limited energy to enable our people to achieve the same standard of living as the United States is the basic goal of digitalization. This is the concrete manifestation of Chinese-style modernization, and I believe that we can be at the forefront of the world at this point.
Cloud computing creates space for my country's chip development
Beijing News Shell Finance: The era of computing power is coming, what opportunities will it bring to the development of China's underlying technology? Can cloud computing technology research and development solve the "bottleneck" problems such as CPU?
Wang Jian: involves "bottleneck" issues such as CPU. From the perspective of cloud computing, the performance of a computer will not completely determine the performance of cloud computing. Pushing down further means that the performance of a single CPU will not directly determine the performance of cloud computing system. Feitian cloud computing operating system is a good case.
So, I think that cloud computing can create an opportunity, an opportunity that does not affect cloud computing (performance) even if a single CPU is relatively insufficient. Cloud computing systems are not restricted by single key technologies, creating space and time for the current development of chips and servers in my country.
uses cloud computing. Even if there is a gap in computing power of a single computer, we can achieve the same effect using 100 machines to do tasks done by others 80 machines. But using 100 machines or 80 machines in the data center is unaware of the cloud computing. Therefore, for cloud computing, the gap in chip performance is not that direct. If you want to have more computing power, just add a computer. The characteristics of cloud computing system create a different path for the current chip pattern, and we should use it well.
Beijing News Beike Finance: What changes may happen to your future life due to computing power?
Wang Jian: I think the most important thing is the change in the concept of computing power. For example, when the computing power center was established in the Xuelang Town in Wuxi, a phenomenon occurred, which was to "computing power", just like water and electricity. I think this is also a concrete manifestation of using data resources as an important market element.
We have not yet seen that computing power is considered as water and electricity in daily life and production. At present, we cannot live without the Internet most of the time. This is the first step. The way people use computing power in the future may change, which will also lead to revolutionary changes in the way of life and production.
Beijing News Shell Finance Reporter Luo Yidan Editor Wang Jinyu Proofreading Yang Xuli
