Shaoguan data center cluster to bolster the development of digital industry

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) is accelerating the building of a national real-time computing hub, as the Shaoguan data center cluster was officially unveiled on May 29.

[Photo: Nanfang Plus]

Between May 28 and May 30, the first GBA computing industry conference was held in Shaoguan, Guangdong. It is also the first of its kind at the national level since the official launch of "east data, west computing" project, which refers to having less developed but resource-rich western regions store and process data transmitted from economically advanced eastern areas.

[Photo: Nanfang Plus]

During the conference, 30 major projects were signed including companies like Huawei, Tencent and Inspur, with a total investment of about 120 billion RMB. And 13 upstream manufacturing companies plan to invest in the green industry, smart city construction and Infrastructure services in Shaoguan.

“Shaoguan data center cluster will invest over 50 billion RMB by 2025, driving the development across the upstream, midstream, and downstream of the data industry,” said Luo Xiaoqin, vice mayor of Shaoguan.

By 2025, Shaoguan cluster will also achieve an overall carrying capacity of 500,000 server racks. And the number of servers will reach 5 million with a utilization rate of no less than 80%.

“Guangdong is well-positioned to build a mega computing hub with strong economic foundation and taking the lead in digital economy competitiveness. It also ranks among the top in terms of digital infrastructure, digital innovation factors, and digital policy environment,” said Wei Shaojun, academician from the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences (IEAS).

With about 310 data centers and 566,000 rack servers currently in operation as of July 2021, Guangdong boasts a combined computing power of 16 quintillion floating-point operations per second (supercomputing excluded), accounting for one-sixth of the nation’s total.

According to the just-concluded 13th Guangdong Provincial Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the province will strengthen the leading role of the digital economy and promote the building of Shaoguan data center cluster in the integrated nationwide computing network.

In February this year, Guangdong gained approval from central government to start the building of a national hub node in the integrated nationwide computing network and set up a data center cluster in Shaoguan.

Author | Fanny

Editor | Wing, Olivia, Will, Jerry