At present, the digital economy is entering a new stage of development. The role of computing power as a core resource in the digital age is increasingly prominent. The construction of digital information infrastructure with computing power as the core has been raised to an unprecedented level. Especially under the driving effect of the "East and West" project, building a high-quality computing power network has become a new direction. So, what stage has my country's computing power industry developed to now, and what challenges will it face in the future have also become issues that the industry is more concerned about.

The booming computing power industry still faces many challenges

"The construction and application of computing power infrastructure in my country has maintained rapid development, which has laid a good foundation for the development of the Eastern Digital and Western Computing Project." At the 8th Information Strategy Forum of the Hundred People's Association of Information Technology, the first-level inspector of the Information and Communication Development Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Chen Jiachun said.

On the basis of building the world's largest optical fiber and mobile communication network, that is, the dual-gigabit network, the scale of computing power is also growing rapidly, with an average growth rate of more than 30% in the past five years. By the end of 2021, the total computing power of my country's data centers has exceeded 140 Eflops. Newly built data centers, especially large and super-large data centers, are gradually moving to the central and western regions and the periphery of first-tier cities. The coordinated development of core regions such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and Chengdu-Chongqing has basically formed, and the central and western regions have coordinated development. Supplementary development pattern.

In addition, Yu Xiaohui, president and deputy secretary of the Party Committee of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, pointed out that in 2020, my country's total computing power will reach 135EFlops, accounting for about 31% of the world's total, maintaining a rapid growth of 55% (the global growth rate is 16%). The proportion of intelligent computing power in my country has increased from 3% in 2016 to 41% in 2020. It is expected that in 2023, AI computing power will reach 70%-80% of the new computing power.

While the computing power industry is booming, Zheng Weimin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor of the Department of Computer Science of Tsinghua University, also pointed out that the current development of computing power in my country faces three major problems: First, the architecture of domestic supercomputing platforms is diverse, and the workload of application transplantation and tuning is large; The second is that the capability of domestic supercomputing platforms to support the full-process computing of complex applications needs to be improved; the third is that the United States is targeting Chinese artificial intelligence companies and faces a huge risk of being stuck.

Multi-point efforts to accelerate the development of the computing power industry and the east and west computing

In response to the challenge of computing power development, Zheng Weimin put forward four suggestions: first, strengthen the research and construction of cross-platform compilation and optimization platform; second, strengthen the research and development of domestic supercomputing HPDA system software; third, propose to define independent artificial intelligence products and introduce measures to encourage The industry is accelerating the use; the fourth is to strengthen the research and development of the integration of HPC, AI and Data computing systems.

In addition, Chen Jiachun, a first-level inspector of the Information and Communication Development Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, also put forward three suggestions for the development of my country's computing power industry and the development of Eastern Digital and Western Computing.

The first is to speed up the construction of computing power infrastructure to ensure the diversified supply of computing power resources. Accelerate the construction of a national integrated big data center system, coordinate the distribution of computing resources in the east and west, accelerate the creation of a multi-level computing power facility system with digital network collaboration, data cloud collaboration, cloud-edge collaboration, and green intelligence, and strengthen the intelligent scheduling of computing power , and orderly promote the Eastern Digital and Western Computing Project, and continue to guide the computing power of various regions in the Eastern and Western regions.

The second is to improve the support capability of the computing power network and strengthen the coordinated and integrated development of the computing network. On the one hand, it is necessary to make up for the weak links in the network between the current computing power hub nodes as soon as possible, focus on improving the network capabilities in the Menggui, Gansu, and Ningxia regions, and start a number of east-to-west computing optical cable construction projects to optimize the computing power network support. On the other hand, it is necessary to gradually establish a synergy and linkage mechanism of computing network to promote the effective connection between the demand and supply of computing power network.

The third is to strengthen innovation drive, application empowerment, and promote the green and inclusive development of computing power. Strengthen the demand for computing power applications, lower the threshold for computing power use, enhance the empowerment level of computing power applications, and explore the deepening application of computing power services in innovative application scenarios such as digital government and industrial Internet.

Chen Jiachun emphasized that facing the future, my country's digital transformation process will continue to accelerate, new technologies and new formats will be accelerated, and computing power will continue to empower thousands of industries and provide new momentum for high-quality economic and social development.