The Arithmetic Network emerges, and the service model will change from "resource-based" to "task-based"

The 21st century is a period of booming information technology, and information has become a new resource for economic development, while computing power has become a new driving force for economic construction. Arithmetic refers to the ubiquitous data processing and computing capabilities, which is a combination of algorithm, communication, cloud computing and speed. However, due to the vast size of our country, the population density is "dense in the east and sparse in the west" and natural resources are "poor in the east and rich in the west", this phenomenon of mismatch between resources and information richness has affected the development of China's information construction. In May 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and other departments jointly issued the "Implementation Plan for the National Integrated Big Data Center Collaboration and Innovation System Arithmetic Hub", proposing the intensive development of data centers in the east and the leapfrog development of data centers in the west, realizing the coordination and deployment of the east and west, initiating the construction of eight national hub nodes, carrying out cross-regional arithmetic deployment, and accelerating the implementation of the "East Data and West Arithmetic" project. In July 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published the "Three-Year Action Plan for the Development of New Data Centers (2021-2023)", hoping to form a new data center pattern with reasonable layout, advanced technology, green and low carbon, and the scale of computing power to match the growth of digital economy within three years. This paper introduces the international and domestic standards of arithmetic network, the insight of the industry on arithmetic network, and the application direction of arithmetic network. The Arithmetic Network was born Arithmetic network is the implementation of the national strategic requirement of "East Data and West Arithmetic" by the operator, with arithmetic as the center and network as the foundation, and the deep integration of "network, cloud, data, intelligence, security, edge, end and chain" (i.e. ABCDNETS) to provide integrated services to realize the information exchange from the network as the core to the information data processing with arithmetic as the core, which is the key part of the intelligent and comprehensive new information infrastructure, as shown in Figure 1. Fig. 1 Arithmetic network to realize ABCDNETS integration and innovation According to the national strategy of "East Data and West Computing" and the layout of multi-level data centers, a high-speed data center direct connection network will be established in the future to accelerate network interconnection and interoperability, and to build a network with integrated cloud and network and excellent edge access performance. Specifically, we need to promote the linkage of resources between multiple clouds, between clouds and data centers, and between clouds and networks to achieve cloud-network integration; build direct data center networks around clusters, optimize network structure, expand bandwidth, reduce data bypass latency, improve cross-regional computing power dispatch level, and achieve cloud interconnection; network performance, excellent real-time performance, data center end-to-end unidirectional network latency in principle in the range of 10 milliseconds, and achieve full cloud access. Realize comprehensive cloud access. In order to promote the "new infrastructure", integrate new elements and stimulate new dynamics, China's three major carriers have laid out the arithmetic network to further promote the upgrade of information service capacity and supply, and promote the application of the arithmetic network in more areas such as national governance, social livelihood, upgrading of traditional industries and expansion of domestic and international markets, so that arithmetic can become a social-level service like water and electricity, which can be accessed at one point and used immediately. The arithmetic network will be developed in three stages, from the "Ubiquitous Synergy" and "Convergence and Unification" stages during the 14th Five-Year Plan period to the "Integrated Endogenous" stage in the medium and long term, to promote the maturation of arithmetic network technology, industry, ecology and business model through scientific and reasonable layout of data centers and utilization of existing communication network advantages. Finally, we will build a new service system of "connection + arithmetic + capability" focusing on 5G, arithmetic network and intelligent platform, actively promote the standardization of arithmetic network, reach a consensus and perfect the application, and truly realize the network is everywhere, arithmetic is everywhere, and intelligence is everywhere. In the eighth plenary session of Network 5.0 in 2020, China Academy of Information and Communication Research, China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and ZTE, Huawei, and China Academy of Science jointly established the Network 5.0 Innovation Alliance Working Group on Arithmetic Network, which mainly studies different routes and technologies in the convergence of arithmetic networks, hoping to reach a consensus in the arithmetic network industry and formulate relevant standards, so as to promote industry development. The group hopes to reach a consensus in the computing network industry and establish relevant standards to promote the development of the industry. China Mobile has released the "White Paper on Arithmetic Networks" and the China Academy of Telecommunications has also started a study on the progress and trend of arithmetic network convergence, so arithmetic networks are developing in full swing. Status of Arithmetic Network Standardization From the domestic perspective, before the country proposed the concept of "East is East and West is West", the three major domestic carriers and equipment vendors had already gained insight into the long-term development trend and direction of edge computing, and gradually reached the consensus that the computing network would develop rapidly and become the growth point of the future digital economy, placing the research of computing network at a strategic level, and deeply exchanging and exploring the basic concepts of computing network technology. So far, the China Communications Standardization Association (CCSA) has established 6 "industry standards" led by the three major operators, involving arithmetic network architecture, protocols, logos and transactions; the Working Group on Arithmetic Network of the Network 5.0 Innovation Alliance established at the 8th Network 5.0 Plenary Session in 2020 has proposed the DNS-based OverLay architecture; the Working Group on Arithmetic Network Convergence established by the China Communications Society also has 2 "group standards". The Working Group on Network Convergence established by the China Communications Society also has two "Group Standard" projects. This shows that the domestic industry and academia are investing heavily in computing networks and the research results are numerous. In contrast, the progress of international arithmetic network standards and research is slow, and the current focus is mainly on "Big T" decoupling cloud business and network connectivity, with insufficient momentum on research and development of arithmetic network convergence, so we do not rule out the possibility that domestic arithmetic network will push back the progress of international standards after booming development. Specifically, the COIN group set up by IRTF mainly conducts research on network programming and new transport layer protocol architecture under the scenario of computational network convergence, but there is no concrete progress yet; IETF proposes distributed scheme architecture, but it is mainly promoted by the three major domestic carriers, ZTE and Huawei; ITU conducts research on the architecture and scenario of computational network, which is led by China Telecom and China Mobile. Development and Application of Arithmetic Network As shown in Figure 2, the arithmetic network can be divided into application layer, arithmetic resource scheduling platform layer and routing layer, where the application layer completes the decomposition and application of arithmetic power, the arithmetic resource scheduling platform layer completes the allocation of arithmetic power, and the routing layer completes the forwarding of arithmetic power. Fig. 2 Arithmetic network hierarchy Arithmetic Network Architecture The arithmetic network architecture is divided into a centralized arithmetic network architecture and a distributed arithmetic network architecture, as shown in Figure 3. This architecture has the only network scheduling and dispatching center, which has the global resource information of the arithmetic and network, and can carry out the coordinated dispatching of the arithmetic and network of the whole network. First, the scheduling policy generated by the scheduling center is forwarded through the controller, and the controller needs to collect network information and send it up to the scheduler. Second, the arithmetic network scheduler is responsible for the collection of arithmetic information, and combines the network information for joint arithmetic network scheduling, and sends the scheduling strategy to the controller to complete the business scheduling. Thirdly, in the centralized arithmetic network architecture, the arithmetic network scheduling center has a global resource view, so it can minimize the impact caused by the equipment. Finally, the arithmetic scheduling layer maintains the global static arithmetic and network topology information, which is then synchronized to each local network node. Each local arithmetic routing node maintains the local arithmetic resources and network resource information in real time, so the local area arithmetic routing is efficient, but the subsequent equipment upgrade cost is also higher. Figure 3: Centralized and distributed arithmetic network architectures Since the arithmetic network is still in the stage of continuous updating and overlapping, it can be verified by centralized arithmetic network deployment in the initial stage and distributed verification in specific small-scale networking scenarios in the later stage. After the protocols, standards, and solutions of the arithmetic network are fully mature, the deployment of distributed arithmetic network will be completed gradually. Application of Arithmetic Network For operators, arithmetic networks can help them change their service model from a provider of bandwidth and network to a provider of network computing power, and seek new directions for development by refining the situation of each business in the operational network. For cloud vendors, arithmetic networks can help them realize resource sharing, flexible on-demand deployment, and save asset investment and operation and maintenance costs of a large number of distributed edge nodes. Therefore, arithmetic network has high commercial value. However, the specific applications of arithmetic networks still need to be explored, and the industry is still exploring them. Through the construction of arithmetic network, the service mode can be changed from "resource-based" to "task-based", and through the integration and global scheduling of arithmetic network resources, we can provide users with the best cost integrated arithmetic network services and improve the overall utilization of arithmetic network resources for companies. When "resource-based" is transformed into "task-based", different modes of services can be provided according to the differentiated needs of users, including the all-inclusive mode of providing application API interface (APaaS capability) directly to users, which can be directly deployed by users during application without paying attention to the distribution of computing resources, i.e., charging according to the number of times the service is deployed; the application code package provided by users, which is packaged, distributed and dynamically deployed by the platform, and the all-inclusive mode of charging according to the number of times the service is deployed. It is also possible to open the scheduling capability directly to the users, presenting the resource leisure and busy situation, and let the users finish the application scheduling by themselves, i.e. the capability open mode that charges according to the resource supply specification. Technical Challenges for the Development of Arithmetic Network Since the arithmetic network is a brand new network architecture, the concept and standard of "arithmetic" as the basic unit of measurement of the arithmetic network have not yet reached a consensus in the industry, which makes it difficult to unify the management of arithmetic devices, arithmetic optimization, and arithmetic billing, and this is a problem that the industry needs to solve. This is a problem that needs to be solved in the industry. We should standardize the measurement of computing power provided by different algorithms and resources, construct a measurement system for the actual computing power demand of users, and improve the performance index of resources recognized by the industry to provide a unified computing power service model for external users. Fig. 4 Hierarchical computing power resource measurement system Based on the above issues, a hierarchical arithmetic resource metric system should be built gradually. IaaS, PaaS and cloud-native resources and services are all broad arithmetic, which can be incorporated into the computing network platform for unified scheduling and scheduling. In the actual implementation stage, we can focus on basic computing power first, and then gradually incorporate PaaS and cloud-native basic services with the progress of metrics and standards to form a hierarchical computing power resource system. "The 14th Five-Year Plan emphasizes the need to strengthen the "new infrastructure", construct a nationwide integrated big data center system, and accelerate the construction of data center system to meet the needs of various industries' applications. The network is an important strategy for social development at this stage, and the operator's network should also evolve into an integrated computing network to serve the digital development of thousands of industries and realize the goal of "computing power as service and network as platform" to empower and increase efficiency for all industries. The computing network is still in the perfection stage, and there are still more problems to be solved. At the same time, operators should also strengthen cooperation between academia and research, industry and research to tackle technical problems and build a healthy and sustainable ecology of computing network integration.