Zhi DongXi (public number: zhidxcom)
Author | Yang Chang
Edit | Li Shuiqing
Zhidong February 25 news, recently, the "East number west calculation" national project officially launched, for the data center industry has brought an important positive signal. (Moments in History!) "Counting the East and Counting the West" National Project launched in an all-round way)
As a "pearl" in the field of data centers, the intelligent computing center has also attracted industry attention.
It is generally believed that the full name of the intelligent computing center is the artificial intelligence computing center, which mainly provides the required computing power services, data services and algorithm services for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, which is composed of AI chips and computing units and other equipment, which is different from the cloud computing center and the supercomputing center. Enterprises and research institutions can rely on the powerful computing power provided by the Intelligent Computing Center to drive AI models to carry out data in-depth processing and achieve AI application innovation.
The national project of "Counting East and Counting West" emphasizes the construction of a computing power network between eight major hubs such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta and Chengdu-Chongqing to support the growing demand for computing power across the country. Along this "map" of the computing power network, we find that the intelligent computing center has "blossomed everywhere".
Counting, from 2021 to the beginning of 2022, there are no less than 20 cities in the country that have built or are building smart computing centers, and the number of smart computing centers has reached 27, of which 12 are located in the eight major hubs, close to 50%.
▲The intelligent computing center within the national computing hub node of the "East Counting West Calculation" project
So which cities are building or planning to build smart computing centers? What kind of impact will the "East Counting West Computing" project have on the Intelligent Computing Center? What is the progress of the construction of the intelligent computing center project in various places? What impact may it have on the local AI industry?
Zhidong has explored these issues with you by investigating the intelligent computing centers planned, constructed and built in various places since 2021, and communicating with industry insiders.
First, 26 cities opened the construction of intelligent computing centers, Huawei Shuguang and other winners
According to Zhidongxi statistics, from January 1, 2021 to February 15, 2022, at least 26 cities across the country are promoting or just completing the construction of local intelligent computing centers, including provincial capitals, such as Nanjing and Xi'an, and non-provincial capitals, such as Xuchang and Qingdao.
Among them, many cities have built information infrastructure such as big data centers, cloud computing centers, and national supercomputing centers locally. However, these centers can not replace the intelligent computing center, there are differences in their functions - like the cloud computing center, mainly to provide cloud services, the supercomputing center mainly provides supercomputing services for scientific research, and the intelligent computing center mainly provides inclusive AI computing power services for enterprises and scientific research institutes.
In addition, CITIC's "White Paper on the Development of Artificial Intelligence Computing Centers (2021)" pointed out that the intelligent computing center draws on the technical architecture of large-scale parallel computing and data processing of supercomputing (high-performance computing) centers and cloud computing data centers, but it is based on AI-specific chips as the computing power base. 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 power through extended construction.
According to our statistics, in 2021, there will be 8 intelligent computing centers built and put into operation or trial operation nationwide, 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-function Intelligent Supercomputing Center, Xi'an Future Artificial Intelligence Computing Center, Zhongyuan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center, Harbin Artificial Intelligence Advanced Computing Center, and the commissioning time is May, June, July, August, September, September, and September. October and December. Most of these smart computing centers have a second-phase construction plan.
▲As of now, the situation of intelligent computing centers put into operation in various places in 2021 and 2022
Some intelligent computing centers are not directly named "intelligent computing centers" or "artificial intelligence computing centers", but adopt the naming method of "advanced computing centers" or "intelligent supercomputing centers", but they also provide intelligent computing power, so they can also be counted as intelligent computing centers, such as Hefei Advanced Computing Center and Zhejiang (Yangtze River Delta) new generation of full-featured intelligent supercomputing centers.
The computing power test benchmarks used by different smart computing centers are different, and the units of computing power used are slightly different, but whether it is "1 P OpS", "1 PFLOPS FP16", "1 Petaflops" or "1 P", it is equivalent to performing 10 billion operations per second.
Since the beginning of 2022, there has been a newly put into operation in China, which is the SenseTime Artificial Intelligence Computing Center in Shanghai.
From January 1, 2021 to February 15, 2022, at least 18 cities across the country have signed contracts, started construction, tendered, and planned to build smart computing center projects, of which at least 6 cities have announced the start of construction, namely Hefei, Qingyang, Dalian, Shenyang, Shenzhen, and Changsha.
▲As of now, the situation of intelligent computing centers planned or already under construction in various places in 2021 and 2022
Compared with the construction of intelligent computing centers in various places before 2021, there are fewer intelligent computing center projects before 2020. However, some of the intelligent computing centers that will be built in 2021 have already set up bidding and pre-research plans in 2020, such as the Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center project.
The intelligent computing center is not a new type of data center that only exists in 2021, and the intelligent computing center built earlier in the mainland includes Shenzhen Pengcheng Cloud Brain and Megvii Wuhu AI Supercomputing Center. In 2018, Pengcheng Yunnao I was initially completed and put into operation, with a computing power of 100 PFLOPS (1 PFLOPS is equivalent to 100 billion computing times per second).
Second, 100P computing power started, and it was "about full" before it was built.
Judging from the geographical distribution of the national intelligent computing centers, at present, there are provinces and cities in the eastern, central and western regions that are deploying intelligent computing centers. As a kind of data center, the construction plan of intelligent computing centers in various places will inevitably be affected by the policy of "east counting and west counting".
In particular, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments pointed out in documents such as the Implementation Plan for the Collaborative Innovation System of the National Integrated Big Data Center: "In principle, for new data centers built outside the national hub nodes, local governments shall not give preferential policies in terms of land, finance and taxation. "As a project led by local governments, the intelligent computing center is very likely to be affected, but it will not necessarily migrate to the western region in large numbers. Because the intelligent computing center is mainly for AI-related industries, the requirements of these services for network communication are also relatively high, and in this regard, the eastern region has a slight advantage.
Ren Jingxuan, senior vice president of Shuguang, told Zhidong that the "East Number West Computing" project will promote the development of the intelligent computing center, and it is expected that in the construction of the national hub node of the national integrated computing power network, the planned data center project will be equipped with a certain scale of intelligent computing power, and some projects may also appear directly in the form of the intelligent computing center.
In addition, judging from the scale of computing power announced by these intelligent computing centers, 100P computing power is the starting goal of many intelligent computing centers.
It is generally believed that 100P is equivalent to about 50,000 high-performance computers. Take the scientific research scenario as an example, astronomers in the 200,000 celestial star chart to locate a certain characteristic star, if the computing power is not enough, the time may take more than 100 days, if you have 100P computing power, the time required to locate the star is only 100 seconds.
Ren Jingxuan said that the 100P mentioned by the general intelligent computing center refers to FP16 or INT16, that is, half-precision computing power, at this stage, starting with 100P, can achieve relatively large scale benefits.
From the perspective of demand, as a city-level public computing power platform, the intelligent computing center should meet the computing power needs of various users such as governments, enterprises, universities and other users in the region, and the starting scale should not be too small, otherwise it will not be able to support the demand for large computing power such as large model training, nor will it be enough to play the scale benefits of intensive sharing.
Ren Jingxuan added that from the perspective of investment, the development of the intelligent computing center is still in its infancy, and the investment in construction, operation, application and ecological construction is relatively large, and it is necessary to make a reasonable assessment in combination with the local financial affordability and make appropriate advance deployment according to actual needs.
Most of the intelligent computing centers are built in phases, and when the first phase is completed, it can be put into operation for the first phase, and then the second and third phases of construction are carried out according to the operation situation and industrial development needs in the later stage.
For example, the Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center, which completed the construction of the first phase of the project in May 2021, and began to provide AI computing power for enterprises, but soon became saturated. As a result, the Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center carried out the expansion of the second phase of the project, expanding the scale of computing power from 100P to 200P. The relevant person in charge of the Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center said in an interview with the media that the computing power of the second phase is now close to saturation, and it is preparing to carry out further computing capacity expansion work.
▲Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center
According to the data of various intelligent computing centers, at least hundreds of enterprises have signed up for intelligent computing centers, such as the Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center has provided computing power for many universities and research institutes, more than 100 enterprises, and the Nanjing Intelligent Computing Center has attracted more than 40 industry-university-research institutions to settle in.
There are many industrial scenarios that a smart computing center can support at the same time, such as automatic driving, smart medical care, smart cities, smart transportation, smart mines, intelligent manufacturing, etc., mainly depending on local needs, generally in order to support the better development of local advantageous industries. For example, Qingdao is close to the sea, and the bidding documents of its artificial intelligence computing center mention that the Qingdao artificial intelligence computing center should support Qingdao's advantageous industrial clusters, such as smart home, intelligent manufacturing and other industries continue to lead intelligently, and emphasize the development of supporting the local smart marine economy.
The above-mentioned intelligent computing centers are not limited to supporting a single industry. However, some cities have chosen to build more targeted smart computing centers, such as Shanxi Jincheng, which has built a smart computing center specifically for the coal industry (Smart Mine Innovation Lab Innovation Achievements & Computing Center). The intelligent computing center is built with the participation of Huawei, Jinneng Holdings and other enterprises, mainly to promote the intelligent construction of Shanxi coal mines.
▲Intelligent Mine Innovation Lab Innovation Achievements & Computing Center
Third, the scientific and technological forces behind the tide of local intelligent computing centers
In the process of building the smart computing center, the AI and ICT companies behind municipal and architectural design companies are important players, such as Shuguang, Huawei, Inspur, Tencent, SenseTime and other enterprises.
In the process of exploring the intelligent computing center, Shuguang, as the leading player in the field of computing, proposed the construction plan of the "5A-level" intelligent computing center, and carried out the practice and exploration related to the intelligent computing center from the five aspects of openness, integration, green, inclusiveness and service. At present, Shuguang 5A intelligent computing center has been completed in Zhuhai, Guangdong, Anhui Hefei, Zhejiang Tongxiang and other places, and its intelligent computing center in Kunshan, Jiangsu and other places has also entered the construction stage.
▲Hefei Advanced Computing Center
Shuguang Intelligent Computing Center will adopt a multi-faceted collaboration method compatible with a variety of chips, algorithms, models, etc. to achieve multi-faceted computing power provision. For example, the Hefei Advanced Computing Center, which Shuguang participated in, can not only provide intelligent computing power, but also provide the computing power required for high-performance computing. In terms of reducing the energy consumption of the smart computing center and data center, Sugon has developed an immersion phase change liquid cooling technology, which can reduce the PUE value of the smart computing center to 1.04 to 1.05.
Huawei should be the first to try the intelligent computing center, and it is also one of the enterprises that participate in the construction of the intelligent computing center in various places. Xu Yingtong, president of Huawei's Ascend Computing Business, revealed during the 2021 World Artificial Intelligence Conference that Huawei hopes to start the construction of more than 20 intelligent computing centers in 2021.
Almost all of the intelligent computing center projects undertaken by Huawei, including "Pengcheng Cloud Brain II" and "Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center", use Huawei's Atlas 900 AI cluster architecture to achieve AI computing power supply. The Atlas 900 AI cluster architecture is composed of thousands of Ascend 910 AI processors, and its final strength reaches 256P~1024 PFLOPS FP16.
▲Pengcheng Cloud Brain
Inspur also has many years of research on the intelligent computing center, whether it is the computing power production, computing power aggregation, computing power scheduling or computing power release link in the operation of the intelligent computing center, Inspur has the corresponding technology and software and hardware support. Nanjing Intelligent Computing Center adopts Inspur AI server computing power units and Cambrian Siyuan 270 and Siyuan 290 intelligent chips and acceleration cards.
▲Nanjing Intelligent Computing Center
As an important player in the data center industry, Tencent has applied its exploration in the data center to the construction of the intelligent computing center, and high-end modular technologies such as Tencent's fourth-generation T-Block have been used in the construction of the Tencent Smart Industry Yangtze River Delta (Hefei) Intelligent Computing Center to support the rapid delivery of the project. Tencent's fourth-generation T-Block and other high-end modular technologies are to modularize the functions of data centers such as IT and air conditioning to achieve flexible configuration on demand.
SenseTime began to carry out pre-research work on the artificial intelligence computing center in 2018, and began the construction of the artificial intelligence computing center of SenseTime in July 2020. On January 24, 2022, SenseTime's Artificial Intelligence Computing Center started operations. SenseTime's ARTIFICIAL Intelligence Computing Center has a peak computing power of 3740 Petaflops, which includes a variety of technological breakthroughs of SenseTime, including high-performance computing, distributed scheduling, hardware/software collaborative design, etc.
▲SenseTime Artificial Intelligence Computing Center
Conclusion: In 2022, a large number of intelligent computing centers will be completed and put into operation
By surveying the smart computing centers built and built since 2021, we found that more and more cities have begun to build smart computing centers. This reflects the importance attached to the AI industry in various places. Judging from the construction period of some existing intelligent computing centers, the general construction time of the first phase is about half a year to one year, and more intelligent computing centers under construction may be completed and put into operation this year. In addition, the "East Counting West Computing" 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 the intelligent computing center is relatively limited, and with the increase in the demand for the construction of the intelligent computing center in various places and the addition of some new players, the players in the field of intelligent computing center may face more fierce competition.