From the era of manpower to the era of computing power, a new future of the digital economy is opened

From the primitive society of drinking blood to the intelligent society of all things, with the development of technology and human demand for a better life, productivity has developed rapidly. As we all know, productivity is composed of labor materials, labor objects and laborers. Among them, people are the most active factor of productivity, and technology is the most critical factor to promote the transformation of productivity.

From ancient times to the present, the development history of human productivity can be divided by "four forces". The first is the age of manpower, in which production activities are mainly carried out by human labor force, and the level of productivity is completely limited by the size of human physical strength; Part of the manpower is liberated; the third is the era of power. Through the scientific and technological revolution, human beings convert various energy sources such as steam and electricity into power to drive machines, and replace manpower with machines to achieve large-scale production, and a major breakthrough has been made in productivity. Now, the development of human productivity Entering the fourth era—the era of computing power, computing power based on chips and software platforms has changed human production methods, living patterns, and scientific research paradigms. Computing power has increasingly become the basis for technological progress and economic and social development. It represents the development level of human intelligence.

In the age of manpower, since the ancient Stone Age, productivity is mainly based on manpower, and human beings mainly rely on their own physical labor and some auxiliary stone tools to engage in production activities. The productivity of the whole society mainly depends on the size of the population participating in manual labor and the physical fitness of individuals, and the improvement of productivity mainly depends on the improvement and upgrading of the stone tools used by laborers. Marx once said that stone tools are not only a measuring device for the development of human labor force (productivity), but also an indicator of social relations through which labor is carried out. Therefore, the degree of cooperation between labor and stone tools determines the level of productivity in the human age. Due to the slow evolution of stone tools, the overall productivity was relatively stable, and the progress of social development was slow. The main objects of productivity are gathering or hunting, and its value is mainly reflected in meeting the basic survival needs of human beings.

In the era of animal power, that is, in the feudal agricultural society represented by large-scale farming, productivity mainly relied on animal power, and humans began to domesticate animals to obtain greater energy productivity. The appearance of bronzes and irons accelerated the application of horse-drawn carts and cattle farming, marking the beginning of the use of livestock power in human production labor, instead of relying solely on manpower itself. In the history of our country, the technology of using oxen to pull the plow has been used as a representative of agricultural productivity for thousands of years until the emergence of the Industrial Revolution. The transition from hand mills to horse-drawn mills in Europe is also a process of gradually replacing manpower with animal power. During this period, the means of production such as land and raw materials did not change substantially compared with the age of manpower, but the tools of labor did undergo substitutive changes. Animal power replaced manpower and was used in wars in addition to farming and transportation. Social productivity was measured in terms of quantity. Has been greatly improved, but has not yet achieved a qualitative leap.

In the age of power, that is, the industrial society between the middle of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century, all kinds of energy were converted into power, driving machines to participate in mass production, breaking through the time and physical strength limits of manpower and animal power, and greatly improving the global economy. social productivity. The innovation and wide application of the steam engine directly promoted the first industrial revolution (mechanization), which made the development of productivity get rid of the stage of factory handicraft industry and entered the stage of large-scale machine production, which promoted the vigorous development of industrial economy. The emergence of gasoline and diesel engines has made automobiles and construction machinery widely popular, and human beings have achieved a large migration on a global scale. The emergence of electricity makes the world enter the "electric age" from the "steam age", that is, the second industrial revolution (electrification). The successive inventions of generators and motors and the emergence of long-distance power transmission technology have led to the rapid development of the electrical industry. widely used in daily life. At the same time, the great development of industrialization has further accelerated the emergence and adoption of new means of production, such as oil and steel. New productive forces and means of production have jointly promoted social development and achieved a qualitative leap.

In the era of computing power, that is, the information society that began in the second half of the 20th century, productivity is mainly reflected in the efficient processing of new production materials such as data. The emergence and widespread use of electronic computers has provided the basic conditions for the development of global automation, informatization and networking, accelerated the ability of human beings to mine new means of production, and expanded the ability of human beings to understand and explore unknown areas. The means of production have gradually changed from oil and steel as the core to data as the core, and evolved to microscopic fields such as molecules and atoms. At present, computing power is no longer a proprietary service in the field of information technology in the electronic computer era, but has penetrated into all walks of life and the entire production process of enterprises, and the participation and proportion of computing power is getting higher and higher. Computing power can not only help enterprises reduce operating costs, but also provide intelligent decision support. Computing power has truly replaced manpower and brainpower, and has become an extension of human capabilities and a transformative force that promotes social progress. As the American scholar Nicholas Negroponte said in the book "Digital Survival", "Computing is no longer just related to computers, it also determines our existence." Computing power is not only the core productivity in the digital economy era, but also increasingly becoming an important factor in people's way of life. In short, computing power is productivity, we call it the first law of computing power, and the "computing power era" has truly arrived.

As the core productivity in the era of digital economy, computing power is reflected in the fact that computing power has been widely used in various fields and levels of economic society, including digital economy, digital society and digital government. The rapid development of computing power is not only driven by technological progress, but also benefits from the explosion of network demand brought about by the development of globalization, people's constant pursuit of a better life that is convenient, efficient, diversified and personalized, and their unremitting pursuit of the unknown world Exploration, as well as the efficiency improvement that intelligent production can bring, are the fundamental driving force for the widespread application of computing power, thus promoting the increasingly rich application scenarios of computing power.

From a macro perspective, computing power, as the core resource of "new infrastructure", will become the technical base supporting the development of digital economy, digital society and digital government. First of all, computing power supports the in-depth development of the digital economy, which has increased the proportion of China's digital economy in GDP from 14.2% in 2015 to 38.6% in 2020; specifically, computing power accelerates the digitalization and networking of industry, agriculture and service industries , Intelligent, and increasingly optimized high-performance computing enables the value of data to be fully tapped and used, thereby promoting the upgrading of large-scale manufacturing to mass customization, intelligent forecasting of crop production, and the individualized needs of thousands of people in the service field. Secondly, the scope of application of computing power in the digital society has been continuously expanded, and has been involved in various aspects such as medical care, education, scientific research, employment, and community services. As of the end of 2020, the telemedicine collaboration network covers more than 24,000 medical institutions in all prefecture-level cities, and a total of 360 million electronic social security cards have been issued, covering all prefectures and cities. Increasing computing power infrastructure construction and creating a smart and safe city have become the key to improving the happiness of residents and the overall competitiveness of the country in the digital age. Finally, with the acceleration of digital government construction, the central government and local governments continue to invest in government data centers and build national electronic databases, which promotes the accelerated popularization of "palm-handled", "all-in-one online", "off-site and cross-provincial". 82.13% of provincial-level administrative licensing items have been accepted online and "run at most once", which has greatly promoted the application of computing power in the field of government affairs, and maximized savings in service costs while improving service efficiency.

From a medium perspective, with the continuous deepening of social digital transformation, more and more organizations and individuals are accelerating their migration to the cloud, laying the foundation for efficient integration and rapid development of computing power. In addition, consumers have higher and higher requirements for digital service content and experience upgrades represented by social networking, entertainment, shopping, and health management. The continuous pursuit of the goal represented by bringing better experience has greatly promoted the all-round penetration of computing power in the industry. However, affected by key factors such as industry digital transformation maturity and cloud penetration rate, different industries have different computing power penetration and development indexes. On the whole, industries with higher digital transformation have higher computing power index. From a global perspective, the computing power of the Internet, manufacturing, and financial industries ranks among the top three. The Internet industry is the industry with the largest demand for computing power because of its e-commerce, games, payment, social networking and other digital services, as well as ICT infrastructure service providers. Provide users with real-time, intelligent and immersive service content and experience as well as enterprise cloud services through computing power blessing. The application level of computing power in various industries in China is generally consistent with that in the world. Internet computing power accounts for nearly 50% of the overall computing power, followed by traditional industries with high digital transformation maturity such as government, service, telecommunications, and finance. In the future, with the improvement of the industry's intelligence level, computing power will radiate to many different fields such as modern agriculture, smart home, and smart power, and be applied to product sorting and crop monitoring in modern agriculture, and home security in smart homes. And scenarios such as power inspection in smart power. On the whole, computing power will gradually penetrate into more traditional industries, and start to penetrate into more industry-specific scenarios from general scenarios.

At present, the application of computing power is increasingly penetrating from the Internet industry to traditional industries such as transportation, industry, finance, and government affairs. The application scenarios have also expanded from general scenarios to industry-specific scenarios, and computing power has played an unprecedented role. The large-scale deployment of 5G and the Internet of Things has greatly strengthened the underlying technical capabilities of computing power. In addition, the widespread application of artificial intelligence has led to a substantial increase in intelligent computing power, and the rapid breakthrough of quantum computing is expected, which will boost the scale of computing power. growth trend. Starting from the use of computing power resources, the industry divides computing power into basic computing power, intelligent computing power and other computing power. According to ICT estimates, the scale of global computing power will grow at a rate of more than 50% in the next five years, among which the growth rate of intelligent computing power will far exceed the total computing power, playing the core driving force in the growth of computing power, and the proportion will also increase from 2020 41% increased to over 70% in 2023. The CCID Research Institute believes that in 2020, my country's general computing power will be 77 EFLOPS, and the AI computing power will be 56.23 EFLOPS. It is predicted that by 2025, the total basic computing power and AI computing power in my country will exceed 300 EFLOPS and 1800 EFLOPS respectively. Huawei released a relatively optimistic prediction that in the next 10 years, mankind will usher in the YB era, and the global intelligent computing power will increase by 500 times. Roland Berger estimates from the application side that in the next ten years, popular applications such as unmanned driving, smart factories, and digital currency will increase their computing power by 390 times, 110 times, and 2,000 times. Based on the current development situation and future trend analysis, global computing power is expected to double every 12 months, which we call the second law of computing power.

The all-round penetration of computing power has brought remarkable results and economic value to all walks of life, and has increasingly become a key driving force for the high-quality development of the digital economy and the national economy. According to relevant research, computing power is closely related to economic growth. For every 1 point increase in the computing power index, the digital economy and GDP will increase by 3.3‰ and 1.8‰ respectively; the higher the computing power index, the higher the computing power will promote economic growth. The multiplier effect is more prominent. In addition, from the analysis of statistical data, it can be concluded that the scale of computing power in countries around the world shows a significant positive correlation with the level of economic development. The larger the scale of computing power, the higher the level of economic development. According to research, the computing power industry is increasingly driving the energy level of other industries, especially the direct driving effect on industries such as electronic components, computers, materials, software, and information technology services. Every investment of 1 yuan in the computing power industry will drive an average of 3-4 yuan of GDP economic output, which we call the third law of computing power.

In the field of industry, computing power input has a more obvious driving effect on economic output in manufacturing, transportation, medicine, retail, energy, agriculture and other fields. For example, in the field of biomedicine, the improvement of computing power has shortened the time for gene sequencing from 13 years to 1 day, and the cycle of new drug development and identification has been shortened from 5,000 days to 100 days; 21.8% has increased to 90% now; in the field of industrial production, rebuilding the entire production process in the digital world and optimizing it through simulation has increased production efficiency by 30%. Computing power has become a key indicator for enhancing the vitality of the digital economy and promoting enterprise transformation.

Computing power has been widely used in many industries and business scenarios, but different businesses have different requirements for computing power, mainly manifested in diverse requirements such as low latency, high mobility, large computing power, and tidal nature. . Typical low-latency scenarios such as VR/AR have a high degree of user participation, and the latency requirement mainly comes from the smooth interaction between people or between people and devices, which becomes a decisive factor affecting user experience; typical high Mobility scenarios such as autonomous driving. In such scenarios, vehicles need to sense and respond to changes in the environment in a complex traffic environment in a timely manner. It is necessary to continuously switch the location of computing power service nodes to achieve the millisecond level required for autonomous driving. Time delay; typical high-computing scenarios such as weapons research and development, flight simulation, climate simulation, birth simulation and gene sequencing and other high-precision scientific research scenarios have intensive computing tasks and require extremely high accuracy; typical tidal demand scenarios such as For office building video surveillance, its computing demand will fluctuate significantly during the day and night as time changes. In the future, computing power needs to rely on cutting-edge technologies such as networking, intelligence, greening, and credibility to meet the needs of business diversification through a service-oriented approach.

The future has come, how to accumulate data resources, improve the computing power level, and optimize the computing power industry has become the common focus of enterprises, regions and even the country, which not only benefits the whole society, but also affects everyone who is trapped in the torrent of the times.