"Energy is what drives computing. The left side of the chip is energy; the right side is code, code for society."
This sentence is fully reflected in the IDC (Internet Data Center) industry.
Data centers are the infrastructure of the Internet. The vast majority of data center costs come from electricity, of which 40% is used for cooling. Statistics show that data center electricity consumption accounts for more than 3% of the world; Bitcoin mines have accelerated this trend.By 2030, this data will account for 7%.
Recently contacted by OdailySeek Techaccording to
according to"2017-2018 China IDC Industry Development Research Report"In 2017, the total size of China's IDC market was 94.61 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 32.4%, which was 18% higher than the world growth level. With the development of the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, the market expects that the demand for data centers will gradually increase.
The domestic IDC market is huge, except for the three major operators, the pattern is scattered.According to IDC Circle, the three major domestic operators occupy the network advantage, and other third-party data centers are mainly US-listed GDS, 21Vianet, A-share-listed Dr. Peng, Sinnet and other companies. The overall gross profit of the industry is around 30%-40%, among which the gross profit of Halo ranks first in the country, as high as 52.6%.
"The cost we reduce is our (market) space." Li Risheng, founder of Seek Tech, said that its price can be reduced to 50-80% of the traditional data center, and it is distributed around the core city.
Technology, power, land and other resources are barriers to the data center industry. How can new entrants enter? Seek Tech believes that its advantages are threefold:
1. Low electricity cost.
Seek Tech stated that its average direct electricity cost is less than RMB 0.2, which is 30% lower than the general cloud computing industry's electricity price of RMB 0.26. At present, more than 2 million kilowatts of electricity have been reserved at home and abroad.
2. The geographical distribution is close to big cities, mainly around or within cities.
Although electricity rates are lower in remote areas, Internet penetration is higher in major cities. For low-latency scenarios, it is still necessary to deploy local servers around large cities.
"Beijing requires that the PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of the data center be 1.4. Basically, the data center cannot meet this requirement, so it can only be built in remote areas, where electricity is cheaper." Li Risheng said, Different cities in China have different energy consumption requirements for industries. If the energy consumption fails to meet the requirements, it means that they will become obsolete and outdated production capacity.
PUE = total equipment energy consumption of the data center/IT equipment energy consumption, which is an index for evaluating data power efficiency, and the closer to 1, the better the energy efficiency level and the more energy-saving. If it reaches 1, it can be understood that this data center uses all the electricity for computing. In 2017, the average PUE of new domestic data centers was 1.73,World average of 1.58 in 2018。Baidu Yangquan Data CenterPUE of 1.11,Google data center average 1.12, is already at the advanced level in the world.
3. High utilization rate of energy.
Li Risheng said that Seek tech has a set of patented software and hardware collaboration system in the working environment of the chip, which can make PUE< 1.1。
At the software level, Seek Tech can control the frequency of each chip to adjust the chip temperature and power consumption, etc., so that its computing power and power consumption can reach the most suitable state. At the hardware level, the heat dissipation effect is more than 20 times that of the traditional air cooling mode, and the input cost is only 1/10 of the traditional heat dissipation method.
Li Risheng explained to Odaily that in theory, the higher the computing frequency of the chip, the higher the temperature and the higher the power required. General hosts limit the operating frequency of the chip, because it can only meet the heat dissipation and power supply under normal working conditions. In a computer room with better supporting equipment, relevant restrictions can be lifted to maximize computing efficiency.
At the hardware level, the cooling of traditional data centers uses dust-free air conditioners to aggregate heat dissipation. Seek Tech uses liquid cooling. New public cloud vendors such as Alibaba Cloud and Amazon also use liquid cooling. The effect of this method on chip cooling is that of air conditioning. 20-30 times.
Seek Tech stated that its self-developed chip heat dissipation and cooling system has been optimized on the basis of traditional liquid cooling. Through the patented flat-plate loop heat pipe, immersion cross heat exchange design and high heat flux density heat collection system, it can be further improved. Improve energy efficiency and be compatible with existing chip board structures. This system can also adjust the indoor temperature and humidity by controlling the liquid flow rate, contact surface, etc.
Seek Tech is currently doing cloud computing trials with a total scale of 150,000-200,000 kilowatts, distributed in Shanghai and Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Jiangsu and other places. Li Risheng said that customers include overseas mining farms, but focus on the construction of ubiquitous power Internet of Things, including artificial intelligence, 5G and other industries.
Seek Tech was established in June last year, and has completed a seed round of equity investment of several million yuan, led by Genesis Capital Sun Zeyu, with a post-investment valuation of 50 million yuan.
The team currently has about 25 people. The founder Li Risheng is a serial entrepreneur. He graduated from Energy and Environmental System Engineering of Zhejiang University and EMBA of Shanghai Jiaotong University.Vice President of AR game platform Wonderland. Partner Zhang Tao graduated from the University of Technology Sydney with a master's degree in finance. He used to be the project leader of the Energy Department of Zhongrong Trust and the head of the Interbank Capital Department of State Grid Yingda Capital. He has extensive experience in the field of energy finance. Other core team members have successively worked in companies such as ABB, China Guodian, China Energy Construction, SMIC, etc., and have experience in large and medium-sized data center construction and operation and maintenance.
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I am Lu Xiaoming (lohiuming), the reporter and editor of Odaily. If there are any omissions in the article, please advise. If you add friends, please note your name, unit, position and reason.
