On September 28, 2026, in the Tianfu Information Industry Park in Chengdu, a shovel of soil was lifted and then fell. Officials from relevant provincial and municipal departments, China Unicom Sichuan Branch, representatives from participating units and industrial chain partners stood in a row to witness a groundbreaking ceremony that was not grand but full of weight - the official start of the fourth phase of China Unicom Tianfu Information Center project.

The weight of a shovel of soil

The park did not start from scratch. The first and second phases bear the general computing power needs of customers such as finance, government affairs and the Internet. The 110 kV special substation supporting the third phase has been put into trial operation, and the power supply guarantee in the park has been upgraded as a whole. The fourth phase has taken on a heavier responsibility: it is the key landing point for China Unicom Sichuan Branch to serve the East, West, and West computing, implement the requirements of computing power interconnection, and also an important carrier for connecting with the construction of the computing power highland in western Sichuan and undertaking the layout of computing power in the province's first district, one belt, and two nodes.

Sichuan's goal is written on paper: to build a computing power highland in the western region by the end of 2028, with the scale of intelligent computing tripled compared to the end of the 14th Five Year Plan, reaching 240EFLOPS, accounting for over 90%. The Tianfu Data Center cluster is one of the top ten clusters for East Data and West Computing, and the Chengdu Plain Computing Power Core Area has been identified as a high-energy area for the development of integrated intelligent computing power for training and inference. The fourth phase of construction is currently on this timeline.

Calculate the energy consumption account first

Before the start of construction, the energy-saving report was officially approved by the competent department in August 2026, and all energy consumption indicators were clearly defined: the project will consume 325.607 million kilowatt hours of electricity and 800 cubic meters of natural gas annually when it is fully completed and reaches production capacity; Purchased 1.3958 million tons of new water, which belongs to energy consuming working fluid and is not included in energy consumption. The annual comprehensive energy consumption is equivalent to 40018.07 tons of standard coal equivalent and 106800.06 tons of equivalent value. The equivalent value and equivalent value of electricity are calculated at 0.1229 and 0.328 kilograms of standard coal per kilowatt hour, respectively. After the completion of the project, the unit output value and added value energy consumption (equivalent value) will be 3.53 tce/10000 yuan and 12.60 tce/10000 yuan, respectively.

Behind the numbers are technological choices. The fourth phase is fully adapted to high-power intelligent computing and wind liquid mixed cooling, with a designed electric energy utilization efficiency controlled at a lower level, using less electricity to support greater computing power.

AI oriented base

This is not a data center with multiple rows of cabinets in the traditional sense. The total investment of the project exceeds 700 million yuan, with a planned deployment of 20kW high-power cabinets. After completion, the standard cabinets in Tianfu Information Center Park will reach 30000, and the intelligent computing scale can reach 10000 cards.

The service objects have also changed: Sichuan Chongqing government cloud, industrial Internet, large model training, intelligent computing power scheduling. With the shift of the large-scale model industry from research and development to large-scale supply, Tianfu Information Industry Park will gradually upgrade to a Token Industry Park, building a complete industrial chain loop for Token production, scheduling, trading, and consumption, gathering large model, intelligent agent, and industry AI application enterprises, and creating a highland for the Southwest Token Economy industry.

From the Chengdu Chongqing economic circle to the new highland of computing power industry in the western region, after a shovel of soil falls, it is the growth of steel and cement, and also the beginning of computing power flowing into various industries.Editor/Yang Meiling