Computational, Green, Meta Universe 2022 Data Center Industrial Policy Review
For the data center industry, 2022 is a year of unprecedented attention. At the beginning of the year, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Central Cyberspace Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the National Energy Administration replied and agreed to start the construction of four national computing hub nodes in Beijing Tianjin Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area, and Chengdu Chongqing region, marking the full opening of the "East to West" project. The data center has become the focus of public attention and the darling of capital. At the same time, driven by the digital wave, the national and local governments have also increased their investment in the construction of new digital infrastructure, and have issued policies to support and guide the development of related industries.
Today, I will take you to check the relevant policies in the data center field in 2022.
The hottest is not "counting the net"
The "East Data and West Computing" is the implementation project of the "Implementation Plan for Computing Hub of the Collaborative Innovation System of the National Integrated Big Data Center". With the full launch of the "East Data and West Computing", computing power and computing network have become the annual focus, and governments at all levels have also introduced many related supporting policies to promote the construction of nationwide computing network. Among them, there are both cities listed as 8 power hub nodes and cities not listed as hub nodes.
In the hub nodes, the "eastern" hub has always been the hot spot of market demand and construction, so the relevant policies are more focused on the overall development of the digital economy and the building of supercomputing and intelligent computing power. The "western" hub pays more attention to the construction and development of data center clusters, hoping to attract more upstream and downstream industries of data centers.
The Action Plan of New Data Center "Computing Power Pujiang" (2022-2024) released by Shanghai Communications Administration in June proposed that by 2024, the computing power supply of the city's data center will present a multi computing power collaboration system dominated by high-performance computing power such as supercomputing power and intelligent computing power, with the total computing power exceeding 15EFLOPS, and high-performance computing power accounting for 35%.
In the policies and measures related to the construction of hub nodes in Gansu, Ningxia and Guizhou, more emphasis is placed on the support for the construction of data centers, the guarantee for the settlement of enterprises and talents, and the cultivation of local computing industry ecology.
In addition, local governments in Anhui, Henan, Hubei, Shandong and other provinces have also issued policy documents related to the construction of digital infrastructure and computing infrastructure according to their own needs for the development of the digital economy, actively integrating into the wave of computing network construction nationwide. For example, the Action Plan for the Construction of Shandong Integrated Computing Network (2022-2025) defines four specific goals: balanced and reasonable computing power supply, secure and reliable storage capacity, high-quality connectivity of transport network, and innovative computing network application. It is also planned to take four years to basically form a province wide computing network development pattern with reasonable layout, green intensiveness, connectivity, and computing scale matching the growth of digital economy, strive to create a national hub node of the national integrated computing network, and create a high-quality growth pole of regional economy in the Yellow River basin.
Table 1: Some policies related to computing power in 2022
Green and sustainable development is still the main theme
Following the upsurge of digital infrastructure construction is the rapid growth of energy demand. With the development of digital industries in various regions, they also bear enormous energy pressure. Therefore, promoting the green transformation of the digital industry is an inevitable choice for achieving sustainable development. Especially in areas with developed digital economy, the policy focus is more inclined to improve energy efficiency than to pursue rapid scale growth.
At the national level, energy conservation supervision has become the focus of this year. On November 1, the national standard Data Center Energy Efficiency Limits and Energy Efficiency Grades officially came into force nationwide. The standard divides the energy efficiency level of the data center into three levels. Level 1 indicates the highest energy efficiency, and the electric energy ratio of the data center should not be greater than 1.20. The electric energy ratio of the data center with level 2 energy efficiency should not be greater than 1.30, and the electric energy ratio of the data center with level 3 energy efficiency should not be greater than 1.50.
Local governments also attach importance to the green development of digital industry. For example, the 14th Five Year Energy Conservation Plan of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region emphasizes that the layout of data center construction planning should be optimized, policy guidance and scientific allocation should be strengthened, and low-level repeated construction should be avoided. In principle, the new large and super large data centers are located within the data center cluster of national hub nodes. The new data center must meet the green data center construction standard, and the PUE value (power utilization efficiency) shall not exceed 1.3. It is also required to promote the green energy-saving transformation of existing data centers, as well as the development of energy-saving technologies such as refrigeration and energy storage.
Special Column 5 of the 14th Five Year Energy Conservation Plan of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
The old transformation is the focus of the digital economy developed cities. The Comprehensive Governance Work Plan for Beijing's Inefficient Data Centers issued by Beijing and the Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Healthy and Orderly Development of the City's Data Centers issued by Shanghai put forward strict energy efficiency indicators and the transformation and elimination mechanism of old data centers.
Table 2: Some green energy conservation related policies in 2022
The universe appears in the multi region policy
As a new trend of the digital economy, "meta universe" has received the same attention as blockchain and mobile Internet. The meta universe needs huge computing power support, which greatly promotes the industry and local governments to attach importance to computing infrastructure. In 2022, the relevant concepts and application scenarios of the metauniverse will be more practical, and local governments will pay more attention to the development of the metauniverse. Many local governments have launched measures and action plans to support the development of the metauniverse, guide the convergence of the metauniverse industry, encourage technological innovation of the metauniverse, and promote the demonstration application of the metauniverse, so as to promote the high-quality development of the digital economy.
For example, in Article 1 of Section II of the Action Plan for the Development of the Meta universe Industry in Zhejiang Province (2023-2025) - Tamping the "Meta facilities" foundation, it is proposed to accelerate the development and application of new generation network technologies such as IPv6, 5G+, satellite Internet, industrial Internet, Internet of Vehicles and infrastructure construction, and appropriately deploy the automatic sensing terminal network in advance. Accelerate the construction of efficient and low-carbon data center, intelligent computing center and other new storage infrastructure, and consolidate the computing support for large-scale, real-time computing. Promote the development of cloud network collaboration and computing network integration, support the development of high-performance computing such as GPU real-time rendering, and encourage the intensive and service-oriented innovation of computing power, algorithms, data, and application resources. Improve the infrastructure capacity building of blockchain, and strengthen the common application support of blockchain, such as secure privacy computing, efficient collaboration on and off the chain, cross chain connectivity, and smart contract audit.
Table 3: Some Metacosmic Policies in 2022
Policy is the wind direction.
Whether it is the construction of the computing network or the landing of the metauniverse, it will bring great development to the computing infrastructure industry and reshape the industrial pattern of the data center. Under the general direction of high-quality and sustainable development, digital infrastructure in the new year, on the one hand, plays the role of the cornerstone of digital economy development, on the other hand, it should also contribute to the green and zero carbon development of the whole society.
