In early autumn on the snow-capped plateau, the sky is clear and the clouds are vast with gentle breezes. Following the "Computing Initiates a New Journey, Intelligence Resides in Mobility" Tibet Journalist Tour into Lhasa, crossing mountains and traversing river valleys, my perception of Tibet's digital industry has been completely refreshed. In the past, when mentioning the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, people's minds conjure images of snow mountains, grasslands, and pristine tranquility—a poetic and distant retreat far from the metropolis. It is hard to equate this high-altitude land with cutting-edge, high-end computing power industries and intelligent computing clusters. However, after an on-site visit to the China Mobile (Tibet Lhasa) Data Center, I truly feel that the snow-capped plateau has long bid farewell to the traditional impressions of remoteness and backwardness. A "Computing Everest" standing on the roof of the world is rising with the new wind of digitalization, transforming the plateau's unique natural endowments into new digital momentum empowering regional development.
As the national computing power industry iterates at full speed and regions compete to deploy infrastructure, high energy consumption, difficult heat dissipation, and high costs are common challenges for many data centers. Tibet, blessed with the unique advantage of low-temperature cold sources, has precisely broken through these bottlenecks relying on the "Computing Everest Plan". As the core hub of Tibet's computing network, the China Mobile (Tibet Lhasa) Data Center breaks away from traditional computing development paradigms. With green and low-carbon as its foundation, domestic intelligent computing as its core, and government and enterprise empowerment as its focus, it has forged a new computing path adapted to plateau characteristics, autonomous and controllable, and sustainable. This provides a brand-new model for the implementation of the "East Data, West Computing" project in the western region and the upgrading of the regional digital economy.
As the core carrier of Tibet's computing power industry, the China Mobile (Tibet Lhasa) Data Center is the largest national Grade-A data center in the region, and also Tibet's first water-cooled and only computing infrastructure capable of supporting high-performance intelligent computing services. Located in Lhasa, the project covers a total area of 63 mu and is being built steadily in three phases. The first phase, with a total investment of CNY 360 million, started construction in 2018 and was officially put into operation in October 2022. It has built a complete computer room, power facility, and supporting comprehensive building, providing a cabinet bearing capacity of 50MW. Currently, the racking rate is 57%. Listed as the Tibet Big Data Center, it has attracted more than 30 enterprises and institutions to settle in, becoming the core foundation supporting the digitalization of Tibet's government affairs and the intelligentization of industries.
To deeply cultivate the plateau computing power track and professionally operate the computing power industry, Tibet Mobile established a Computing Power Branch Company in December 2024. It precisely anchors four core positioning: as a pioneer of computing power business outside the region, a supplier of AI capabilities within the region, a supporter of the company's computing power business, and a guardian of the Lhasa Data Center. It proactively docks with the demands of the AI industry, builds a cross-regional computing power coordination system of "demand in the east, supply on the plateau", and enables the plateau's computing power to step out of the snow domain and serve the whole country.
Driven by the strategic guidance of Tibet's "Computing Everest Plan", multiple heavyweight domestic intelligent computing projects have been intensively landed, completely making up for the long-term shortcomings of high-end computing power on the plateau. It has built a diversified, autonomous, and controllable plateau computing power matrix, leveraging tens of billions of CNY in industrial investment. In March 2026, a domestic intelligent computing project with a total investment of CNY 120 million and 150P computing power was successfully put into production. It landed Tibet's first fifth-generation RISC thousand-card computing cluster, equipped with domestically produced AI computing chips across the board. Breaking the monopoly of traditional computing architectures, it deeply serves the integrated scenarios of "AI + energy sector" with the advantages of open-source modularity and autonomous controllability.
With the first-phase computer building operating at full load and the second and third phases fully implemented, the overall project can drive over CNY 20 billion in industrial investment, injecting strong capital vitality into Tibet's digital industry.
The stable operation of plateau computing power is inseparable from the comprehensive escort of hardcore infrastructure. The special environment of high altitude, low atmospheric pressure, and large temperature differences poses far more stringent standards than those in inland areas for computer room power supply, cooling, and security operation and maintenance. To this end, the data center has built a triple power guarantee system. Dual substations with 4-route municipal power input build a solid basic guarantee. UPS uninterruptible power supply provides instant backup. Four high-power diesel generators can start automatically within 5 minutes, equipped with supporting hundred-ton-level underground oil tanks, which can achieve more than 10 hours of emergency power supply. Under extreme weather and unexpected scenarios, it ensures zero interruption of computing power business and zero operation failures.
In the field of green energy conservation, the data center fully revitalizes the plateau's natural cold source advantage, creating a benchmark for green computing power in the west. As Tibet's first water-cooled data center, the project has built a closed-loop chilled water circulation cooling system, paired with an 800-ton large-capacity cold storage tank, which can achieve 30 minutes of emergency continuous cooling. Relying on Lhasa's year-round low-temperature climate advantage, the core cooling units do not need to start at high frequency, reducing energy consumption by more than 70% compared to traditional cooling modes. Currently, the data center is accelerating the promotion of liquid cooling technology transformation to adapt to 12-16KW high-power computing servers. At the same time, it is deploying photovoltaic and wind power green electricity pilots, exploring a new low-carbon development model of "green electricity + computing power", making the plateau's computing power greener, more efficient, and more sustainable.
Security and compliance are the core confidence of high-end computing power services. The data center has built an integrated intelligent platform for dynamic environment monitoring, computing power scheduling, and security prevention and control. 585 monitoring cameras paired with infrared perimeter intrusion protection achieve second-level perception of security risks and ultra-fast alarming. At the same time, it holds multiple core qualifications such as National Grade-A Data Center, CQC Operation and Maintenance L3, ODCC 4A certification, Ministry of Public Security Multi-Level Protection Scheme Level 3 certification, commercial cryptography security assessment, and trusted computing power large market entry and network access permission, fully meeting the access standards for government, finance, Internet, and other businesses. At the hardware level, the 13 modular computer rooms in the first phase have clear division of labor. Seven computer rooms are in normal operation, and six are reserved to adapt to high-performance intelligent computing projects. High and low power cabinets are reasonably proportioned. Continuous annual transformation investment of over CNY 100 million demonstrates Tibet Mobile's long-term strategic vision in deploying future large model training and intelligent inference businesses.
During the field research, we also clearly see that the plateau computing power industry still faces practical challenges such as insufficient talent reserves, fewer local application scenarios, and limited transmission latency. To achieve long-term industrial development, it is necessary to continue to deeply cultivate digital grassroots governance, digital cultural tourism, and smart livelihood fields. Relying on special carriers such as the 1376 Global Pass Station, it promotes the transformation of computing power resources from "computing power leasing" to "computing power empowerment", enabling high-end computing power to take root on the plateau, serve people's livelihoods, and empower local industrial upgrading.
From the perspective of media research, Tibet's "Computing Everest Plan" has taken a differentiated path for computing power development in the west. Different from the eastern computing centers that focus on talent and latency advantages, Tibet relies on its unique plateau cold source, autonomous and controllable domestic computing power, and rigid demand for government and industry scenarios to build an irreplaceable core competitiveness in computing power. The practice of the China Mobile (Tibet Lhasa) Data Center fully proves that the development of computing power in the west does not need to replicate the eastern model. By basing on its own endowments and leveraging strengths while circumventing weaknesses, it can create a benchmark for characteristic industries.
A new journey of computing power on the snow-capped plateau has already begun. From a barren highland to a computing hub, from the end of information to the digital frontier, Tibet takes technology as its wings and computing power as its peak, making the "Computing Everest" stand on the roof of the world. In the future, as computing power infrastructure is steadily upgraded, application scenarios are further enriched, and the industrial ecosystem accelerates to take shape, plateau computing power will continue to release digital dividends, becoming a brand-new core engine driving the high-quality economic and social development of Tibet.
Editor-in-charge / Layout: Zhu Wenfeng
Reviewed by: Mei Yaxin
Supervised by: Liu Qicheng