On July 7, Premier Li Keqiang of the State Council inspected the data center in Gui'an New area, Guizhou Province, during which he asked about the scale of data storage and server performance.
As a matter of fact, after China put forward the new infrastructure concept this year, it has attracted the attention of all parties. As one of the cores of new infrastructure, data center construction is also on the fast track, which can be seen from a series of plans released by leading manufacturers, and the planned data center capacity ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions, which brings a new dawn to the server industry.
Securities Times e company reporter learned in the interview, including Tencent, BABA, China Mobile Limited and other head manufacturers are strengthening the self-research or customization of the server. On the other hand, the domestic server has come to the fore and has been favored by the purchaser. In the second half of the year, with the further disclosure of server procurement demand from manufacturers such as China Mobile Limited, the server industry will usher in an inflection point of rising prosperity.
Cloud vendors increase
Server self-research strength
Tencent's cloud computing data center in Qingyuan officially opened on July 3, and the entire data center cluster is planned to hold more than 1 million servers. The data center will deploy Tencent Cloud's first self-developed Xinghai server on a large scale for the first time, which can meet the requirements of ultra-large-scale server delivery and integration of software and hardware in cloud computing scenarios, Tencent said.
According to Tencent's financial report in 2019, the annual revenue of Tencent's cloud business exceeded 17 billion yuan, an increase of more than 86% over the same period last year. Cloud business has become an important driver of overall revenue growth. Another data shows that Tencent has a total of more than 1 million servers in the whole network.
There is no doubt that Tencent's self-developed server has something to do with its rapidly expanding cloud service business. The person in charge of Tencent's server supply chain said in an interview with the Securities Times e company that the self-developed server is mainly based on the development of public cloud business and the consideration of scale and hardware / software coordination.
The person in charge told reporters that traditional enterprise servers are more based on private clouds and traditional software architectures, and there will be challenges when adapting to large-scale cloud businesses. "self-research server is more from the enterprise's own business development to consider, of course, self-research for cost, quality, efficiency will have benefits, but not limited to this."
Self-research server is not the patent of Tencent alone, as the person in charge of Tencent said, self-research server is the only way for the world's leading cloud manufacturers. In fact, this is more like a technological trend sweeping from Europe and the United States to China. Microsoft Corp, Alphabet Inc-CL C, Amazon.Com Inc and other manufacturers have already launched self-research and made breakthroughs on server chips or the whole machine.
BABA has similar actions. In 2017, BABA proposed the Citroen server architecture to improve the efficiency of virtualization through software and hardware collaborative design, which represents a change in cloud data center virtualization technology.
Qian Ling, chief scientist of China Mobile Limited Cloud capability Center and general manager of the technology department, told the Securities Times e Company that servers account for the highest proportion of cloud computing investment. At present, leading enterprises in the industry are using independent research and development, in-depth customization to build servers, on the one hand to reduce costs, on the other hand to provide differentiated competitiveness.
As a leading telecom operator in China, China Mobile Limited has put great emphasis on the integration of ICT business in the past two years, and has made it clear that he wants to become the first camp of domestic cloud service manufacturers within three years. Qian Ling told reporters that at present, China Mobile Limited Cloud capability Center has carried out the research and development of customized servers and intelligent hardware, which will complement the collection work in the future.
The person in charge of the Tencent server supply chain also confirmed to the reporter that Qingyuan data center will mainly focus on self-research servers in the future. "We delivered a self-developed server last year, and a number of self-developed servers will be delivered at the end of this year. In the future, the new data center will basically be based on self-developed servers."
China Merchants believes that in the stage of the popularity of white-brand machines and brand machines, self-research servers from Internet enterprises are beginning to emerge, and there are two main reasons behind this phenomenon: one is to maximize to meet their own needs, for example, to solve the problem of arithmetic loss in traditional virtual machines; the second is to maximize the reduction of costs, including the simplification of materials and application scenarios.
As Internet cloud computing manufacturers such as Alphabet Inc-CL C, Amazon.Com Inc, Tencent, BABA, and other Internet cloud computing manufacturers are building data centers around the world, China Merchants pointed out that the traditional server industry chain is changing, that is, from the original design and production through brand servers, or to white-brand manufacturers to customize the model to be directly handed over by cloud computing manufacturers to contract manufacturers.
Leverage the data center to strengthen the cloud strategy
Cloud computing relies on the construction of the data center, and the server is the core hardware of the data center. Head cloud service vendors increase the number of self-developed servers based on the strategic consideration that the data center is about to usher in large-scale construction. This year, the country proposed a new infrastructure, which also set the tone for the data center construction from the top-level policy.
At present, mainstream cloud manufacturers are gradually increasing the size of the layout of data centers. Among them, China Mobile Limited has planned data centers in 31 provinces across the country, and will create a three-tier data center layout structure with unified planning for the whole network.
According to Qian Ling, N central nodes can radiate all major regions of the country to meet the standardization needs of the whole network; unify standards for 31 provinces, build multiple provincial data centers to meet the needs of localized users, and achieve 100% coverage of cloud services; for more than 300 prefectures and cities, build and flexibly deploy X sunken edge clouds as needed, and achieve full coverage of national data centers by point and area within 3 years.
Under the guidance of the above layout structure, the large-scale bases built by China Mobile Limited involve 18 central nodes, including South China (South Base), Central China (Changsha) and North China (Information Port).
In May this year, China Mobile Limited launched a new resource pool in Xi'an and Shanghai. Resource pools such as Hangzhou, Chongqing, Jinan and Suzhou are currently in preparation for launch, and joint venture resource pools have been built in Jiangsu, Fujian, Liaoning, Beijing and other places. According to the plan, China Mobile Limited's computing power will exceed 12 million vCPU (virtual processor) capacity in 2020.
In terms of data center construction, Tencent also issued ambitious plans. Tencent, a person in charge of the server supply chain, told reporters that as early as three years ago, Tencent had made a detailed plan for the layout of the data center in the next 5-10 years, forming the layout of South China, East China, North China, and Southwest China.
From the perspective of mainstream cloud manufacturers, the construction of data centers is closely related to the growth of the cloud service market. Tencent relevant responsible person feedback said that Tencent's cloud computing capacity can meet the fast-growing market demand. Among them, the server increment is planned according to the design of more than 3 million units, and the corresponding planning will be continuously adjusted according to the development of the whole business.
Echoing this, in May this year, Tang Daosheng, president of Tencent Cloud and intelligent industries, announced that Tencent would invest 500 billion yuan in the next five years in the further layout of new infrastructure projects such as cloud computing and data centers. Zhang Jianfeng, president of Aliyun, said that in the next three years, BABA will invest another 200 billion yuan in future-oriented data center construction and major core technology research and development.
In addition, in June this year, Kuaishou Technology also announced an investment of 10 billion yuan in self-built data centers and plans to deploy 300000 servers, mainly for big data and AI training. Other manufacturers such as Byte Jump and JD.com are constantly increasing the construction of data centers.
Tencent said that with the help of national policy, the entire industrial chain of semiconductors, data centers and mobile terminals has developed rapidly, which has played a positive role in the cloud service industry. "originally, it was more dependent on cloud manufacturers to drive industrial transformation and upgrading, but now with the support of the state, I think the future will be an era worth looking forward to."
Qian Ling also mentioned to the reporter China Mobile Limited's consideration in the cloud business structure, that is, the unified planning of the group company, the overall leadership of the government, enterprise and enterprise departments, the main construction of the cloud capability center, responsible for capacity building, and the provincial company for the main battle, responsible for the sales channel; through management-construction coordination, war-construction coordination and other models to meet customers' one-stop response to the cloud business needs.
From various forecasts, with the rapid development of the cloud services market, data center construction will also accelerate. According to the White Paper on Cloud Computing Development (2019), the overall market size of cloud computing in China in 2018 was 96.28 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 39.2%. By 2022, the domestic public and private cloud markets are expected to grow to 173.1 billion yuan and 117.2 billion yuan, respectively.
Server demand ushered in inflection point
Generally speaking, telecom operators, Internet companies, financial enterprises and government departments have the greatest demand for servers. With the promotion of the new infrastructure policy, the deployment of domestic data centers has accelerated, which has also led to the prosperity of the server industry. In fact, we can see some clues from the collection of servers by domestic operators.
In May this year, China Telecom Corporation issued a tender for server collection in 2020, with a procurement demand of 56314 units, which is 9.3% lower than that in 2018, but since China Telecom Corporation did not have server collection at the group level in 2019, this year's collection is of great significance.
One month earlier than China Telecom Corporation's collection, China Mobile Limited also released the demand for server collection in 2020, involving more than 138000 sets, refreshing the maximum scale of a single tender. According to the estimates of different institutions, the scale of China Mobile Limited's collection is about 8 billion yuan to 10 billion yuan. In addition, China Unicom has also released a special test for server collection in 2020, and the procurement plan has been clearly defined.
Northeast Securities pointed out in the report that the superimposed 2020 5G commercial, the industry is expected to enter a new round of investment period. After the adjustment in 2019, the server market will re-enter the year of demand in 2020. Previously estimated that the scale of server demand in the operator market in 2020 will exceed 22 billion yuan, from the current progress, the probability is higher than expected.
Qian Ling also revealed in an interview with reporters that in the first half of this year, China Mobile Limited Group carried out server collection work and purchased about 130000 servers. "this purchase is mainly for the business demand in the second half of this year, which will meet the server usage from this year to the end of this year. In the second half of the year, the Group is expected to launch a collection plan for next year and the year after next, and is currently collecting network-wide demand."
The demand of the Internet industry can not be ignored, China Merchants pointed out that as Internet manufacturers enter the capital expenditure cycle, the server industry has been determined to enter the uplink channel. In particular, Tencent, BABA and other enterprises have accelerated the layout of cloud computing infrastructure, enterprises in the industrial chain are expected to benefit.
A state-owned A-share server manufacturer also confirmed to the reporter that in the past two years, the demand for servers in the Internet industry was less, but the demand from the Internet industry is growing steadily. "servers are the key equipment in the underlying architecture of cloud computing. Server procurement is cyclical and will drive demand when the data center is expanded or a node is upgraded."
When asked whether the server industry has entered an upward cycle, the person said that due to the impact of new infrastructure and the 5G wave, many manufacturers have a need to further improve their computing power. Its meaning is self-evident.
In A shares, Xinhua 3, which is owned by Chaochao Information and Ziguang, is the main supplier of server machines. However, more and more manufacturers have seen the attractive prospect of the server market. At the beginning of this year, Donghua Software and Huawei jointly launched the first batch of "Pengxiao" servers based on Kunpeng processor. At present, the company has signed a contract with Ningbo and Qingdao, and will invest in building a "Pengxiao" base in the two places. expand server production and supporting software research and development, promote the large-scale commercial application of "Pengxiao" server.
Another private server manufacturer told reporters that the development of the server industry depends on the trend of cloud services. "in the past two years, both private and public clouds have developed rapidly, and the cloud of enterprises has also been supported by the central policy, judging from the fact that various industries have begun to apply or engage in cloud computing business. it also confirms that the server is a good track."
The above-mentioned state-owned background company mentioned that in the emerging electronic information industry, the server is the most important supporting point. Information and digital construction are inseparable from the computing link, server products are a very important support in the entire information architecture, there must be a very large market demand, but also attract many manufacturers to participate in it.
According to the forecast data released by IDC in June, as market demand picks up after the end of the epidemic and the country will speed up the construction of new infrastructure in seven major areas, including 5G and big data Center, China's x86 server market will remain strong in the next few years, with a compound growth rate of about 9.1% from 2020 to 2024.
The server is autonomous and controllable
The level is constantly improving.
With regard to the server industry, an important trend is localization. In China Telecom Corporation's server bidding collection in 2020, Intel accounted for 79.4% of CPU server demand, 0.7% of CPU chip server demand and 19.9% of domestic server demand (which is equipped with Huawei Kunpeng CPU or China Science and Technology dawning Haiguang CPU).
The server industry has long been dominated by foreign brands such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard. In recent years, the tide and Xinhua 3, Huawei, ZTE and other manufacturers also gradually occupy a place, which is another feature of the continuous localization of the server industry.
Generally speaking, cloud computing manufacturers have very high requirements for the stability of hardware such as servers and maintenance teams. they will first attach importance to the stable performance of servers, and at the same time, they will also consider choosing server manufacturers with high product maturity, good performance-to-price ratio and complete qualifications. server manufacturers with large-scale centralized supply capacity and strong production capacity.
Qian Ling told reporters that domestic servers already have the ability to scale commercial use, and China Mobile Limited will actively introduce them to create a secure and controllable cloud computing infrastructure.
"our collection of server manufacturers include Huawei, ZTE, Xinhua 3, Zhongke dawning, FiberHome, etc., among which Huawei and Xinhua III all include localized servers in the collection bid section. in terms of current use, the effect is good, and there is no big difference in capability compared with foreign CPU, and we are more satisfied with the performance and price of domestic servers." Qian Ling said.
Compared with the average price in the global market, the price in the Chinese server market is relatively low. from the domestic market, in recent years, the sales volume of servers in the domestic market has increased steadily, and the sales trend is rapid.
Qian Ling believes that the main reason for this phenomenon is that in recent years, the technology of Chinese server manufacturing enterprises has made continuous progress, and the degree of chip autonomy has increased. The rise of domestic chips represented by Longxin, Feiteng, Shenwei, and Kunpeng has pulled down server prices and brought down the overall cost of servers, which is also good news for China Mobile Limited, who has large-scale procurement needs for servers.
Tencent server supply chain official said that Tencent as an Internet manufacturer, for semiconductor hardware, is currently more to make good use of mainstream hardware, screening and selection of hardware suitable for business development.
Taking Xinghai server as an example, Tencent developed the whole system from frame to motherboard. The chip is commonly used in the industry, but the chip makes some customized choices (mainly suitable for cloud business scenarios). The main performance indicators of the products on the same chip platform as the market are mainly reflected in energy saving, stability and ease of use; they have been running for more than half a year and are stable and trouble-free.
Another example of server localization is the continuous landing of Huawei Kunpeng industry. a person from a server manufacturer using Kunpeng processor told reporters that in internal tests, the performance of Kunpeng processor is the same as that of foreign processors.
Talking about the current pursuit of domestic substitution in the capital market, the person pointed out that domestic enterprises have seen the necessity of domestic substitution, and a series of technological disputes in recent years have also created opportunities for domestic substitution. "this is not so much a hot spot in the capital market as an inevitable trend of industrial development."