Cloud computing should be wary of digital traps

"Shangji/Wen" Impulse is the devil. Recently, the national provinces and cities began to Yun Yu, announced the cloud strategy and cloud planning, people can not help but think of this old warning. One of the Zhongqing's goals is staggering: Chongqing's design of the supercomputer to be built will be 10 times times the performance of the t0p500 's first "K" supercomputer. After the excitement, we should think about whether we fall into a digital trap that is stimulated and whitewashed by cloud technology and GDP.

The Grand blueprint for cloud computing, which has been released by various provinces and cities, puts the building of a cloud-computing center or Supercomputing Center in a prominent position. I have always been enthusiastic about the development and progress of computing, but I have a cold sweat about the size and frenzy of government-led cloud computing and supercomputing, because the working relationship is able to understand the real state of some data centers.

First of all, up and down the cloud base and computing Center is an important feature of this round of development, and basically do not divide the region and the foundation, there is a trend of overall flowering. But what needs to be addressed is the big question of the location principle of the energy supply and location Computing center.

Supercomputers are often big spenders, with the Japanese "K" supercomputer, whose power reaches 12,660-kilowatt, which is actually an extremely large number. If the performance is increased by 10 times times, even if the process and technology maturity can offset some of the increase in energy consumption, the overall power load will still be more than 50,000-kilowatt, or even close to 100,000-kilowatt. According to the new 1-kilowatt when the new generation, transmission equipment requires about 5000 yuan of rough calculation costs, the construction of a supercomputing center required by the new power load is also a staggering number, if the perennial boot operation, its consumption of electricity and huge electricity costs is also a huge economic burden. If the perennial idle, its hardware discount on the loss of assets is also extremely huge.

Google in order to heat the data center, specially selected in a water source next to the construction of data centers, Cloud Computing Center site not only to consider the power supply, but also need to consider the local water resources, annual average temperature and other environmental indicators, because each element may have a huge impact on the subsequent costs.

Now most of the big cities are facing the situation of lack of electricity and water, and the new generation capacity in the environmental protection caliber more and more stringent premise, we can not do too high expectations. Therefore, the development of cloud computing base and the Super center, geographical elements are to be faced. The development of cloud computing industry, rely on Zooey power rationing can not solve the problem, the energy problem is like the geographical location, which determines that cloud computing should not and can not blossom in all places.

Second, the biggest challenge for China's cloud computing industry may not be the hardware building of cloud computing resources, but the lack of talent to master cloud Computing's core technologies. Because of historical reasons, the original supercomputer is often given priority in national defense, scientific research and other high-tech areas, so the actual application of supercomputers is relatively small, and the use of supercomputers and methods are not universal. From the experience of Europe and the United States and other developed countries, the super computer to the real economy pull and help role is not big. If a supercomputer is built into the t0p500 list, how it will be commercially available, and how it will be civilian, is a huge challenge and a problem for the technology and talent gap.

Like in Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, such as energy-rich areas, the development of cloud computing industry base in the energy supply is not a problem, but in high-end cloud computing talent "people and" is still scarce. From the national level, there are only Alibaba, Baidu and so on a very limited number of companies with the core of cloud computing technology and experience. The railway online ticketing system is a very vivid and brutal reality case, no matter how good the wish, in the case of severe user load changes, technology and management of immature cloud computing resources may be problematic, which is even disastrous for business.

Now global multinationals in China to build a cloud computing center in the process, acting positively and proactively, and very happy to help with technology and programs, because in this process they can sell a large number of processor chips and other hardware, but in the cloud ultimately rely on application services and fees to achieve the link between the industry chain, In this regard these international giants do not give us much substantive help. In the actual application development links, but also mainly rely on their own strength. Due to the current access to the t0p500 of the hardware standards and software systems are different, the current built in the supercomputer center is also the natural use of various standards, which for the actual application of the program development has brought great difficulties, cloud computing standards need to be in the interests of the game to achieve balance and results, All over the country in the cloud computing center of the construction of a set of standards and programs, in the future in the actual operation will be a huge hidden dangers and trouble.

Third, the current development of cloud computing industry in China and its theoretical advantages, there is a huge contrast. The purpose and significance of cloud computing is to integrate computing resources and improve the efficiency of computing resources, so that users can get more economical and easy to use computing services.

But in the brutal reality, the cloud computing industry chain of any ring out of the problem, business can lose money. For example, once the supercomputer runs, it faces tens of millions of dollars or even billions of dollars in electricity costs, component providers always say that supercomputers are the best at calculating the power of each unit, so the higher the computational resources, the more energy-saving, but they tend to deliberately ignore a key indicator, which is the actual load level of calculation. The average computing load level of a supercomputer is usually very low, and if the queued computing task is not sufficient to create a constant load of computational pressure, then supercomputers have no advantage in the economy of the commercial market.

Supercomputers can be used as a national strategy to implement the tools, regardless of cost, but if commercial, it must face the test of cost and benefits.

Like Taobao in the face of the double 12 crazy promotions, not the replacement of the higher performance of the super server, but the use of Low-power server groups to do a balanced deployment, because real business customers must be in the economy and computing needs to balance. This is the real cloud computing business needs and application examples. In fact, the demand of "urgent" gene research, meteorological research and earthquake prediction, which often appears in the press release, does not need to build more than 10 super centers to support its operation.

Scientific and technological input must be forward-looking and advanced, but if all over the country if the large, special cloud computing Center, once the increase in computing resources is much higher than the demand, or because of talent problems, so that the cloud computing center load level are low, then the cloud computing efficiency and cost advantages will disappear.

With the increasing of the network bandwidth, the interconnection calculation will increase the utilization of computing resources. But all over the country have occurred in order to protect local beer, not let the foreign beer brand into the administrative disorderly law enforcement behavior. In the case of computing resource redundancy everywhere, it will be possible to rely on executive orders to intervene in the choice of cloud computing services, which require us to do targeted prevention.

If the cloud computing base is a commercial company to operate, I think how they invest and choose is understandable, High-tech industry must bear higher risks, and in the process of the fittest embodies the magic of efficiency and cost; If these cloud computing or supercomputing centers are government investment or national financial support, It requires a very detailed investment timetable and proposal, as well as a detailed investment recovery budget, and please indicate clearly which experts and academics are supporting and endorsing those ambitious cloud plans and cloud blueprints, for reasons and reasons.

Does the public have a right to know how much hard-earned money is needed to support each shining cloud industry figure? How much risk does it take to invest in cloud computing? Who will be responsible for these risks? And these, is exactly what I have not seen in the development blueprint of cloud computing everywhere, hope to see on the next "cloud" diagram.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)