Li Jie from CAICT: Analyzing the Development of Computing Networks from the Perspective of “Eastern Data and Western Computing”

Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the National Energy Administration jointly issued a reply letter, agreeing to start the construction of national hub nodes of the national integrated computing network in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and the Chengdu-Chongqing region. So far, the eight hub nodes have all been approved, and the "East Data West Computing" project has entered the formal launch and implementation stage. The "East Data West Computing" project will optimize the layout of the national computing infrastructure, improve the supply capacity of computing infrastructure, fully release computing demand, and ensure the development of my country's digital transformation and digital economy.

The Internet for “Eastern Data and Western Computing”

Similar to the power grid of "West-to-East Power Transmission" and the pipeline of "West-to-East Gas Transmission", the communication network is one of the important foundations for the implementation of the "East-to-West Data and West-to-West Computing" project, providing a data transmission channel for the computing power infrastructure in the east and west. Unlike the call for hydropower resources, the call for computing power has two-way requirements for the network. In other words, the network must not only realize the transmission of data from the east to the western data center, but also carry the feedback of the calculation results.

Improving network throughput and ensuring data transmission quality are the key to shifting computing power supply from the east to the west, and then optimizing the supply and demand relationship of computing power across the country. The network will transform from traditional human services to data center services, which is the key to the computing power network. In order to support the development of the "East Data West Computing" project and strengthen computing power empowerment practices, the network needs to be optimized across and within regions for the interconnection scenarios of different data centers and the data center service scenarios of end users, and continuously improve network availability.

Network-related policy requirements

In terms of policy, in order to optimize and improve my country's data center network, in recent years, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and others have successively issued documents such as the "Implementation Plan for the Computing Hub of the National Integrated Big Data Center Collaborative Innovation System" and the "Three-Year Action Plan for the Development of New Data Centers (2021-2023)". The "Implementation Plan for the Computing Hub of the National Integrated Big Data Center Collaborative Innovation System" points out that "the network transmission channels between national hub nodes will be further opened up, the implementation of the 'East Data West Computing' project will be accelerated, and the level of cross-regional computing power scheduling will be improved"; the "Three-Year Action Plan for the Development of New Data Centers (2021-2023)" proposes to promote the coordinated construction of new data centers and networks, and clearly requires that "the end-to-end network one-way delay of data centers within national hub nodes should be less than 20 milliseconds in principle", and in the network quality improvement action, a special data network coordination project is set up to optimize network configuration and reduce network latency.

Network-related industry practices

As data center application scenarios continue to expand, the service efficiency and quality of data centers have become the key for customers to choose data centers and then serve end users. In recent years, with computing power infrastructure as the core, the network has been continuously optimized and adjusted to meet the requirements of national policies such as "East Data West Computing", thereby achieving the goal of ubiquitous computing power and serving user needs. In general, industrial practice has experienced the development process of cloud-network collaboration, cloud-network integration, and computing-network collaboration. It is currently in a stage of accelerated transformation from network cloudification to computing power accessibility, and computing-network integration is its development goal.

With the in-depth promotion of the "East Data West Computing" project, the cloudification trend of my country's data center network will continue to strengthen, and the computing facilities of data centers and network development will be further integrated. At the same time, the network will not only be a channel to ensure data transmission, but will also shift from a passive pipeline to an agile service. Therefore, in the process of network construction, it is necessary not only to consider ensuring network connectivity, but also to build a higher level of elasticity functions that can respond quickly to any situation to support the needs of new business models. At the same time, the intelligence of the network also needs to be continuously improved to perceive the computing power requirements of nodes in the computing power network, and to implement computing power scheduling through algorithms, so as to provide users with more inclusive computing power services and fully realize the safe and reliable scheduling of computing power at the national level.

“Computing Power Platform” forms industrial synergy

Under the guidance of relevant competent authorities, my country's first "computing power platform" built by the data center team of the Cloud Computing and Big Data Research Institute of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology has been online for many years. The platform has the capabilities of multi-dimensional information collection, monitoring, and supply and demand matching for computing power infrastructure such as data centers.

In terms of data disclosure, the platform displays my country's multi-dimensional heat map of data centers, the data center industry development index, as well as the green and low-carbon level of data centers and national new industrialization industry demonstration bases (data centers), effectively guiding the development of low-carbon and high-quality computing infrastructure.

In terms of network quality, the platform has established a nationwide network measurement system. The construction and application of this network measurement system is expected to provide effective support for the implementation of the "East Data West Computing" project and the national computing power scheduling.

In terms of supply and demand matching, the platform already has the ability to coordinate data center network needs.

To further support the implementation of the "Eastern Data and Western Computing" project, it is necessary to build a new computing network that integrates data centers and networks, to provide guarantees for the orderly guidance of computing power demand in the eastern part of my country to the western part, and then to promote the linkage between the east and the west, to achieve efficient scheduling of computing power, and to fully empower the development of the digital economy. In the future, the data center team of the Cloud Computing and Big Data Research Institute of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology will continue to leverage its own advantages, work with the industry to formulate relevant specifications, improve the supply and demand platform, promote computing network collaboration, and help the deployment and development of "Eastern Data and Western Computing".