Making computing power as readily available as water and electricity (Innovation Story)
Previously, in core computing power regions such as the Yangtze River Delta and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, my country successfully completed the world's first pilot verification of a hybrid 400G and 800G dual-rate network on a single wave. Guiyang-Guangzhou was one of the pilot areas, further promoting the efficient interconnection and collaborative development of computing resources. This breakthrough is inseparable from the efforts of our team.
Following the launch of the "East Data West Computing" project by the state, Guizhou, as one of the national hub nodes of the integrated computing power network, accelerated its transformation from a "data warehouse" to a "computing power factory." With this opportunity at hand, the team's focus became clearer. In 2023, with the establishment of the East Data West Computing (Guizhou) Intelligent Computing Center project in Guizhou, our team dedicated itself to building a green data center integrating general computing, supercomputing, and intelligent computing. We increased our intelligent computing capacity from the initial 2P (1P is approximately equal to 1 quadrillion calculations per second) to over 10,000P today, transforming a pond into a lake.
We needed to build robust computing power while ensuring reliable data transmission. Previously, the network layer was low, and data stored in Guizhou often had to transit through "transfer stations" like Chengdu in Sichuan and Guangzhou in Guangdong before reaching its destination. Through the core node project, we upgraded the network layer to the core layer, opening direct dedicated lines to 24 cities and constructing a low-loss optical cable connecting Guiyang, Guilin, and Guangzhou, reducing latency by 33% compared to traditional methods. This means that a company in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area that generates 1 PB (petabytes) of data daily (equivalent to 500,000 high-definition movies) can transmit it to Guizhou in minutes via the ultra-high-speed Guiyang-Guilin-Guangzhou channel, reducing costs by over 30%.
In addition to massive computing power and low-latency transmission, efficient scheduling of computing power is also very important.
To improve the efficiency of matching computing power supply and demand, the team successfully implemented the "Xirang" computing power scheduling platform in Guizhou. This serves as a hub for computing power transmission, enabling nationwide coordination and scheduling of computing power to meet the needs of various sectors. Through "Xirang," computing power becomes as readily available as water and electricity.
Taking meteorological monitoring as an example, Guizhou has complex geology, making it a persistent challenge to improve the accuracy of meteorological monitoring. In collaboration with the Guizhou Provincial Meteorological Bureau, we promoted the application of a lightweight meteorological diffusion model. This not only solved the bottlenecks of traditional numerical weather prediction models in terms of computing power requirements and data utilization, but also improved the accuracy, timeliness, and resolution of short-term rainfall forecasts, buying valuable time for disaster prevention and mitigation.
While tackling key scientific research challenges, the team also sought ways to accelerate the commercialization of research results. We developed a 5G smart factory platform, equipped with 2,000 smart terminals, and used a large-scale artificial intelligence model to achieve full-process digitalization of production and sales. We created a "5G + digital twin factory" for the chemical industry, which reduced the accident rate in the factory by 40% and improved management efficiency by 30% through robot dog inspection and smart safety helmet monitoring. We also introduced talents from universities and research institutes to form a lightweight large-scale model team and took the lead in pre-training lightweight large-scale models.
Looking ahead to the 15th Five-Year Plan period, artificial intelligence will empower various industries, and the intelligent computing power industry will also accelerate its development. Currently, the team is leading the construction of the Guizhou Provincial Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which will attract more upstream and downstream enterprises in the computing power industry chain to Guizhou, contributing to the high-quality development of the digital economy.
(The author is the project leader of the EastDataWestComputing (Guizhou) Intelligent Computing Center. This article was compiled from an interview with Su Bin, a reporter from People's Daily.)
Link
Guizhou continues to strengthen and optimize its digital economy
In recent years, Guizhou has seized new opportunities in implementing its digital economy strategy, strengthening and optimizing its digital economy. In 2024, the revenue of Guizhou's software and information technology services industry exceeded 100 billion yuan, and its digital economy growth rate has ranked among the top in the country for many consecutive years.
Over the years, Guizhou has seized the opportunity of building the first national-level big data comprehensive pilot zone to gradually construct a digital economy industrial pattern of "one center, one base, and one platform." With the launch of the "East Data West Computing" project, Guizhou has attracted many enterprises to settle in, forming a complete industrial chain ecosystem of "cloud services - data storage - data cleaning and processing - data application."
Currently, Guizhou has 50 data centers under construction or in operation, with a computing power of 150 quadrillion calculations per second. Its intelligent computing share, localization rate, and regional concentration all exceed 90%, making it one of the regions with the strongest intelligent computing capabilities and the most abundant intelligent computing resources in the country. Simultaneously, Guizhou has taken the lead in carrying out market-oriented allocation reforms of data elements, promoting the development and utilization of public data resources, cultivating a data trading market, and promoting the circulation of data elements nationwide.
In the future, Guizhou will continue to focus on computing power, data, applications, and industries, vigorously developing the computing power industry with intelligent computing as the focus, the data industry with the construction of high-quality datasets as the focus, the artificial intelligence industry with industry-wide large models as the focus, and the electronic information industry with digital intelligence as the feature, so as to further leverage the effectiveness of digital intelligence integration.
(Compiled by Su Bin, People's Daily reporter)
