Recently, the national development and Reform Commission and other departments recently jointly issued documents, agreeing to start the construction of National Computing hub nodes in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay area, Chengdu and Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu and Ningxia, and planned 10 national data center clusters. So far, the overall layout design of the national integrated big data center system has been completed, and the “counting from the east to the west” project has been officially launched. How will “counting from the east to the west” open a new chapter in the computing network? The communication world focuses on this topic and invites industry experts to express their views. Together, we will see through the “counting from the east to the west”.

Recently, the state has comprehensively launched the “computing in the East and computing in the west” project. It plans to guide the computing demand in the east to the West in an orderly manner, optimize the construction layout of the data center and promote the collaborative linkage between the East and the west by building a new computing network system integrating data center, cloud computing and big data.

Optical fiber communication network is an important component and key bearing base of information infrastructure. The national “14th five year plan” and the “14th five year plan” of information and communication industry attach great importance to the future development of optical fiber communication network, and the development of gigabit optical network, backbone network evolution and service capacity upgrading have become the key contents. The launch and implementation of the major project of “computing from the east to the west” will bring explicit benefits to many aspects in the field of optical communication, such as high-speed optical modules and optical devices, ultra large capacity transmission, multi-layer coordination, and the evolution of cutting-edge technologies, and boost the accelerated development of technology and industry.

Optical module ushers in the development opportunity of high-speed optical devices

In view of the natural advantages of transmission capacity, integration, energy consumption and cost, optical modules and optical devices have become the key components of information and data interaction between equipment units in the data center. The optical module used in the data center has occupied about 75% of the market share of the optical module used in data communication, and the data center has become one of the main application scenarios of the optical module.

At present, the application of high-speed optical modules in the data center is dominated by 100Gbit / s rate. 200gbit / s and 400gbit / s optical modules are introduced synchronously, and the proportion of the latter two types is gradually increased, especially the demand for 400gbit / s rate modules of 2km and 500m is more obvious.

With the launch of eight national computing hub nodes such as Beijing Tianjin Hebei and Yangtze River Delta, as well as the construction projects of 10 national data center clusters such as Zhangjiakou and Wuhu, operators, cloud service providers, users of various industries, scientific research institutions and other industrial entities will also gather in the construction and application of national data center clusters, and the flow of data interaction in data center clusters will increase significantly, High speed optical modules such as 200gbit / s, 400gbit / s, 800gbit / s and 1.6tbit/s will usher in a new round of development opportunities.

Considering the actual interconnection bandwidth demand of the data center, the development level of optical modules and optical devices, application cost and other factors, it is expected to focus on the application of 200gbit / s and 400gbit / s rates in the near future. In the future, the application will gradually transition to higher rates such as 800gbit / s and 1.6tbit/s, and extend and promote the development and application of high-end photoelectric chip devices with 50g baud and above rates, Further enhance China’s comprehensive capabilities in the theoretical research of high-speed optoelectronic signal processing, the design and development of high-end chip device modules, multi link verification and evaluation, and the formulation of international and domestic standards.

Diversified interconnection promotes the accelerated development of optical transmission

With the gradual advancement of China’s “counting from the east to the west” project, the reliable interconnection channel between different data centers within the data center cluster and between different data center clusters is very key. Its importance can be compared with the oil and gas pipeline in the national “west to East Gas Transmission” project.

For the interconnection between data centers within the data center cluster, the point-to-point interconnection mode with transmission distance within the order of 100 kilometers is mainly used as a whole. The corresponding demand will promote the development and application of ultra large capacity transmission technology in the order of 100 kilometers, such as 400gbit / s WDM (wavelength division multiplexing) technology, which has gradually entered the commercial stage, And 800gbit / s WDM technology being studied at present. In terms of specific transmission equipment form and interconnection mode, there are many potential point-to-point interconnection schemes, such as router + integrated OTN / WDM, router + open OTN / WDM, router + pluggable color light module and so on. In view of the relatively simple interconnection requirements of data centers within the national data center cluster, the interconnection scheme needs to be comprehensively selected in combination with various factors such as bandwidth and performance, integration, management mode and flexibility, and overall cost. Of course, in some scenarios, there are also cases of multi-point interconnection and networking based on optical transmission network or reconfigurable optical add drop multiplexing equipment (ROADM) technology.

For the interconnection between different data center clusters, on the whole, the multipoint to multipoint mesh interconnection mode with transmission distance of hundreds to thousands of meters is mainly used. The relevant requirements will promote the gradual application of thousands of meters of super large capacity transmission and networking technology, such as 200gbit / s WDM / OTN technology which has entered large-scale commercial use, and 400gbit / s 800gbit / s WDM / OTN technology, etc. In terms of specific transmission equipment form and networking capability, it is expected that integrated OTN and / or ROADM will be the mainstream scheme.

Overall, the diversified and high-quality interconnection needs of the “East digital West computing” project will further promote the accelerated development of key technologies and applications of ultra-high speed optical transmission.

Computing power and intelligent coordination of optical network are very important

As the core productivity of digital economy, computing power plays an increasingly important role in the development of industrial digitization and digital industrialization. In the “east to West computing” project, the overall distribution and application efficiency of computing power are closely related to the technical links such as data center, cloud computing, big data and communication network and their mutual cooperation ability. Compared with optical communication network, it is indispensable to realize the seamless connection between infrastructure and provide a reasonable and efficient network structure. As a basic network providing super large capacity, stable and reliable interconnected transmission channels between different data centers within the data center cluster and between data center clusters, optical communication network is developing step by step in the direction of software defined architecture, management and control integration, intelligent enhancement and so on.

With the application of computing power in bandwidth, it provides granularity, transmission basic characteristics and