The intelligent brain of "calculating the east and the west"! 26 cities compete to build intelligent computing centers.

Smart things (WeChat official account: zhidxcom)

Author | Yang Chang

Edit | Li Shuiqing

On February 25th, the national project of "Computing East and Computing West" was officially launched, which brought important positive signals to the data center industry. ("historical moment! The national project of "east calculation and west calculation" was launched in an all-round way. )

As a "pearl" in the field of data center, intelligent computing center has also attracted much attention from the industry.

It is generally believed that the full name of intelligent computing center is artificial intelligence computing center, which mainly provides computing services, data services and algorithm services for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. It consists of AI chip and computing unit, which is different from cloud computing center and supercomputing center. Enterprises and research institutions can rely on the powerful computing power provided by intelligent computing centers to drive AI models for deep data processing and realize AI application innovation.

The national project "Computing from East to West" emphasizes the construction of computing capacity networks among eight hubs, including Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta and Chengdu-Chongqing, in order to support the growing demand for computing capacity in China. Along this "map" of computing power network, we find that intelligent computing centers have blossomed everywhere.

In detail, from 20021to the beginning of 2022, there are no fewer than 20 cities in China that have built or are building intelligent computing centers, and the number of intelligent computing centers reaches 27, of which 12 is located in eight hubs, which is close to 50%.

Intelligent computing center within the node range of "East Computing and West Computing" national computing hub

So which cities are building or planning to build intelligent computing centers? What kind of influence will the project of "computing from east to west" bring to the intelligent computing center? How is the construction of local intelligent computing center progressing? What impact may it have on the local AI industry?

Zhidongxi will discuss these issues with you through the investigation of intelligent computing centers planned and under construction in various places since 20021and the communication with people in the industry.

According to the statistics of Zhidongxi, from 1 in 2002 to1in October to1in February 2022, at least 26 cities in China are advancing or just completing the construction of local intelligent computing centers, including capital cities such as Nanjing and xi 'an, and non-capital cities such as Xuchang and Qingdao.

Among them, many cities have built information infrastructures such as big data centers, cloud computing centers and national supercomputing centers. However, these centers cannot replace intelligent computing centers, and their functions are different-like cloud computing centers, which mainly provide cloud services, supercomputing centers mainly provide supercomputing services for scientific research, and intelligent computing centers mainly provide inclusive AI computing services for enterprises and research institutes.

In addition, the white paper on the development of CITIC Artificial Intelligence Computing Center (202 1) points out that the intelligent computing center draws lessons from the technical framework of large-scale parallel computing and data processing in supercomputing (high performance computing) center and cloud computing data center, but it is based on AI special chip. The software and business architecture of the above three types of centers are different, but cloud data centers and supercomputing centers can also provide intelligent computing capabilities to the outside world through expansion and construction.

According to our statistics, in 20021year, eight intelligent computing centers were built and put into operation or trial operation, namely, Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center, Hefei Advanced Computing Center, Nanjing Intelligent Computing Center, China Telecom Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Big Data Intelligent Computing Center, Zhejiang (Yangtze River Delta) New Generation Full-featured Intelligent Supercomputing Center, Xi 'an Future Artificial Intelligence Computing Center, Zhongyuan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center and Harbin Advanced Artificial Intelligence Computing Center, respectively, in May. Most of these intelligent computing centers have a second-phase construction plan.

Up to now, the situation of intelligent computing centers put into operation in 202 1 and 2022.

Some intelligent computing centers are not named as "intelligent computing centers" or "artificial intelligence computing centers" directly, but are named as "advanced computing centers" or "intelligent supercomputing centers", but they also provide intelligent computing capabilities, so they can also be counted as intelligent computing centers, such as Hefei Advanced Computing Center and Zhejiang (Yangtze River Delta) New Generation Full-featured Intelligent Supercomputing Center.

There are some differences in computing power benchmarks used by different intelligence centers, and the computing power units used are also slightly different, but whether it is "1 P OpS", "1 PFLOPS FP 16", 1 Petaflops "or" 1pp "

Since the beginning of 2022, a new intelligent computing center has appeared in China, which is the artificial intelligence computing center of Shanghai Shangtang Technology.

Many cities are building intelligent computing centers. From 202 1, 1 to February 2022, 15, at least 18 cities in China have signed contracts, started construction, invited tenders and planned to build intelligent computing centers, among which at least 6 cities have announced that they will start construction, namely

Up to now, intelligent computing centers planned or already under construction in 20021and 2022.

Compared with the construction of local intelligent computing centers before 20021,there are fewer projects of intelligent computing centers before 2020. However, some intelligent computing centers that started construction in 20021have actually started bidding and pre-research planning in 2020, such as the Wuhan artificial intelligence computing center project.

Intelligent computing center is not a new data center that existed only in 202 1. The intelligent computing centers built earlier in China include Pengcheng Yunnao in Shenzhen and AI Supercomputing Center in Wuhu. In 20 18, Pengcheng Yunnao No.1 was initially built and put into operation, with a computing power of100 pflops (1pflops is equivalent to a computing power of one trillion times per second).

Judging from the geographical distribution of national intelligent computing centers, at present, there are provinces and cities in the eastern, central and western regions deploying intelligent computing centers. As a kind of data center, the construction planning of intelligent computing center is bound to be affected by the policy of "computing from east to west".

In particular, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments pointed out in the "Implementation Plan for Computing Hub of National Integrated Big Data Center Collaborative Innovation System" and other documents: "In principle, local governments may not give preferential policies in land, finance, taxation and other aspects to new data centers outside the national hub nodes." As a local government-led project, the intelligent computing center is likely to be affected, but it will not necessarily move to the western region in large numbers. Because the intelligent computing center is mainly oriented to AI-related industries, these services also have higher requirements for network communication. In this regard, the eastern region has a slight advantage.

Ren Jingyan, senior vice president of Zhongke Shuguang, told Zhidsomething that the "East Computing and West Computing" project will promote the development of intelligent computing centers. It is expected that in the construction of the national hub node of the national comprehensive computing network, the planned data center project will be equipped with a certain scale of intelligent computing capacity, and some projects may also appear directly in the form of intelligent computing centers.

In addition, judging from the scale of computing power announced by these intelligent computing centers, 100P computing power is the initial goal of many intelligent computing centers.

It is generally believed that 100P is equivalent to the computing power of 50,000 high-performance computers. Take the scientific research scene as an example. Astronomers need to locate a characteristic star in the map of 200,000 celestial bodies. If the computing power is insufficient, it may take more than 100 days. If the computing power is 100 p, then the time required to locate the star is only 100 second.

Ren Jingyan said that 100P mentioned by the General Intelligent Computing Center refers to FP 16 or INT 16, that is, semi-precision computing power. At this stage, starting from 100P can achieve relatively large scale benefits.

From the demand point of view, intelligent computing center, as a city-level public computing platform, should meet the computing needs of various users in the region, such as government, enterprises, universities and so on. And the starting scale should not be too small, otherwise it will not be able to support the computing needs of large-scale model training, and it will not be enough to play the scale benefits enjoyed by intensive * * *.

Ren Jingyan added that from the investment point of view, the development of intelligent computing center is still in its infancy, with large investment in construction, operation, application and ecological construction. It is necessary to make a reasonable assessment according to the local financial affordability and make appropriate arrangements in advance according to actual needs.

Most intelligent computing centers are established in stages. After the first phase is completed, the first phase can be put into operation, and then the second and third phases can be built according to the operation situation and industrial development needs.

For example, Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center completed the first phase of the project in May 20021,and began to provide AI computing capacity for enterprises, but it soon became saturated. As a result, Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center has expanded the capacity of the second phase of the project, and the scale of computing capacity has been expanded from 100P to 200p. The relevant person in charge of Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center said in an interview with the media that the computing capacity of the second phase of the project is close to saturation at present, and with the preparation for further expansion of computing capacity,

Wuhan artificial intelligence computing center

According to the data of intelligent computing centers, at least hundreds of enterprises have signed up for intelligent computing centers. For example, Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center has provided computing power for many universities and research institutes and more than 100 enterprises, and Nanjing Intelligent Computing Center has attracted more than 40 Industry-University-Research institutions to settle in.

A smart computing center can support many industrial scenes at the same time, such as autonomous driving, smart medical care, smart city, smart transportation, smart mines, smart manufacturing and so on. , mainly depends on local demand, generally to support the better development of local advantageous industries. For example, in Linhai, Qingdao, the tender document of its artificial intelligence computing center mentioned that Qingdao artificial intelligence computing center should support Qingdao's advantageous industrial clusters, such as smart home, intelligent manufacturing and other industries, and stressed the need to support the development of local smart marine economy.

The above intelligent computing center is not limited to supporting a single industry. However, some cities choose to build more targeted intelligent computing centers, such as Jincheng, Shanxi, which has built an intelligent computing center specifically for the coal industry (innovative achievements of intelligent mine innovation laboratory &; Computing center). The intelligent computing center is built by Huawei, Jinneng Holdings and other enterprises, which mainly promotes the intelligent construction of Shanxi coal mines.

Innovative achievements of intelligent mine innovation laboratory &; computation center

In the process of building intelligent computing center, AI and ICT enterprises behind municipal and architectural design enterprises play an important role, such as Shuguang, Huawei, Inspur, Tencent, Shangtang Technology and other enterprises.

In the process of exploring the intelligent computing center, Shuguang, as a leading player in the field of computing, put forward the construction scheme of "5A-level" intelligent computing center, and carried out practical exploration of the intelligent computing center from five aspects: openness, integration, green, inclusiveness and service. At present, Shuguang 5A intelligent computing center has been built in Zhuhai, Guangdong, Hefei, Anhui and Tongxiang, Zhejiang, and its intelligent computing center in Kunshan, Jiangsu has also entered the construction stage.

Hefei Advanced Computing Center

Shuguang Intelligent Computing Center will adopt a multi-element cooperation mode compatible with various chips, algorithms and models to realize multi-element computing capability. For example, Hefei Advanced Computing Center, which Shuguang participated in, can not only provide intelligent computing power, but also provide computing power needed for high-performance computing. In reducing the energy consumption of intelligent computing center and data center, Dawning has developed the submerged phase change liquid cooling technology, which can reduce the PUE value of intelligent computing center to 1.04 to 1.05.

Huawei should be the first enterprise to try the intelligent computing center, and it is also one of the enterprises that participate in the construction of intelligent computing centers in the world the most. Xu Yingtong, president of Huawei's upgrade computing business, revealed during the 20021World Artificial Intelligence Conference that Huawei hopes to start the construction of more than 20 intelligent computing centers in 20021year.

Several intelligent computing center projects undertaken by Huawei, including Pengcheng Yunnao No.2 and Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center, almost all adopt Huawei's Atlas 900 AI cluster architecture to realize the supply of AI computing power. Atlas 900 AI cluster architecture consists of thousands of 9 10 AI processors, and its power finally reaches 256 p 1024 lops FP 16.

Pengnao

Inspur has also studied intelligent computing centers for many years. Whether it is computing power production, computing power aggregation, computing power scheduling or computing power release during the operation of intelligent computing centers, Inspur has corresponding technology and software and hardware support. Nanjing Intelligent Computing Center adopts Inspur AI server computing unit, CAMBRIAN Siyuan 270 and Siyuan 290 intelligent chips and accelerator cards.

Nanjing Intelligent Computing Center

As an important participant in the data center industry, Tencent applied its exploration in data centers to the construction of intelligent computing centers. For example, Tencent Smart Industry Yangtze River Delta (Hefei) Intelligent Computing Center has used high-end modular technologies such as Tencent's fourth-generation T-Block to support rapid project delivery. Tencent's fourth-generation T-Block and other high-end modular technologies modularize the functions of data centers such as IT and air conditioning to achieve flexible configuration on demand.

Shangtang Technology started the pre-research work of artificial intelligence computing center from 20 18, and started the construction work of Shangtang Technology artificial intelligence computing center in July 2020. 65438+20221October 24th, Shangtang Technology Artificial Intelligence Computing Center started operation. The peak computing power of the artificial intelligence computing center of Shangtang Technology is as high as 3740 Petaflops, which includes various technological breakthroughs of Shangtang Technology, including high-performance computing, distributed scheduling, software and hardware collaborative design and so on.

Shangtang technology artificial intelligent computing center

Through the investigation of intelligent computing centers completed since 20021,it is found that more and more cities have started to build intelligent computing centers. This reflects the importance that all localities attach to the AI industry. Judging from the construction cycle of some existing intelligent computing centers, the first phase of construction usually takes about six months to one year, and more intelligent computing centers under construction may be completed and put into operation this year. In addition, the "Computing from East to West" project will also have multiple impacts on the planning and construction of the new intelligent computing center.

At present, the number of enterprises participating in the construction of intelligent computing centers is relatively limited. With the increasing demand for the construction of intelligent computing centers and the addition of some new players, players in the field of intelligent computing centers may face more intense competition.