Scenes of Nezha charging through flames with his Fire-Tipped Spear and a space elevator soaring skyward play on loop across the massive display screens in the rendering exhibition hall of China Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park. The intricate details of light refracting on water, the texture of burning flames, and the delicate folds of flowing robes are all meticulously crafted by computing power, frame by frame. How exactly are three-dimensional assets transformed into such vivid imagery? What processes does a single frame undergo from modeling to final compositing? And where does the computing power behind these visual effects originate, who orchestrates it, and how does it operate?

In a recent visit to the Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park, I sought answers among hundreds of server racks.

Computing Power Fuels the Dream of VFX Production

The entire animated feature "Nezha: The Devil Child Conquers the Sea" (hereafter "Nezha 2") comprises over 5,000 VFX-heavy shots, with the vast majority of high-difficulty lighting, fluid, and particle effects calculations relying on the computing resources of the Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park, a staff member explained in the park's exhibition hall. The three-dimensional models, character skeletons, multi-layered texture maps, and dynamic fluid simulations produced by film production teams cannot be directly rendered into viewable footage. Visual effects rendering is the process of using computational power to synthesize these various types of data—models, animations, lighting, and materials—into finished frames of imagery. This inherently creates an extremely high barrier to entry in terms of computing power.

Taking a scene from "Nezha 2" as an example, a single frame depicting the Heavenly Cauldron breaking through the sea contains hundreds of millions of polygons. Simulated effects such as particle explosions and seawater flowing in reverse require the simultaneous processing of hundreds of thousands of threads, the staff member noted. A single second of finished footage might require thousands of servers operating continuously for several days, placing stringent demands on hardware memory, multi-core parallel processing, and long-duration stable operation. "Without sufficient computing power, the effects cannot be produced; without stable computing power, the images cannot be retained," the staff member added. Under the traditional model, film studios relied on single-workstation rendering, which could stretch the complete rendering cycle for an animated feature to several years.

The solution offered by the Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park involves assembling thousands of servers to build a large-scale rendering "farm," establishing the largest rendering computing hub in Southwest China. As the largest telecom operator implementing entity in the park, China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd. (hereafter China Mobile) has partnered with Ya'an Digital Economy Company to construct Phase I of the Ya'an Intelligent Computing Center, providing 128P of intelligent computing power. They independently operate two Class-A standard data center buildings, with over 4,000 racks in operation and 26,000 devices deployed, representing a cumulative investment exceeding 3 billion yuan.

In terms of rendering efficiency, we have compressed what was once a multi-year rendering cycle down to an industry-acceptable project timeline, the staff member told us. The value of this solution has been validated through large-scale practical application. Beyond the "Nezha" series, the Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park has provided rendering support for over 3,000 domestic blockbuster films, including "The Wandering Earth 2," "The Tale of Chang'an's Lychee," and "East Island," covering animation, historical drama, and science fiction genres. It truly serves as the "digital studio" for major Chinese productions. Currently, more than 80% of domestic high-end VFX blockbusters have their rendering processes supported by the computing power of the Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park.

Green Energy Empowers a Low-Carbon Computing Foundation

The computing power behind blockbusters like "Nezha 2" is green computing power. Ya'an's ability to consistently attract film teams from across the country stems from its inherent geographical advantages. Located in the transitional zone between the Sichuan Basin and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Ya'an enjoys an average annual temperature between 14.1°C and 17.9°C. The cooling requirements for servers running around the clock are significantly lower than in plain cities. Combined with abundant local hydropower resources and a stable geological structure, the data center's Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) remains consistently low throughout the year, substantially reducing the electricity costs associated with VFX rendering. "These exceptional natural conditions mean that the cost for users to place servers in Ya'an is 30% to 40% lower than in Chengdu," the staff member explained.

Furthermore, Ya'an is one of China's top ten hydropower bases, with 533 hydropower stations distributed throughout the region, capable of supplying stable surplus clean hydroelectricity during both flood and normal seasons. Leveraging its favorable temperatures and abundant hydropower, the Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park has become the first data center cluster in the country to achieve "carbon neutrality" across its entire operations. The core computing node's mobile cloud node achieves a PUE as low as 1.12, consuming over 2 billion kWh of hydropower annually, equivalent to reducing carbon emissions by 1.6 million tons, ensuring that film VFX are powered by green energy.

A coordinated computing-electricity scheduling system further amplifies the green power advantages of the park. "Film projects have flexible timelines, allowing massive computing tasks to be scheduled during nighttime hours when hydropower output is high and computing capacity is idle," Chen Anran, Deputy General Manager of the Group Client Department at China Mobile Sichuan Ya'an Branch, explained. China Mobile's integrated computing network brain can open a two-way linkage channel between power dispatch and computing power dispatch, dynamically adjusting the scale of rendering computing based on the local hydropower output schedule. During periods of surplus hydropower, the data center maximizes its absorption of offline computing tasks, fully utilizing idle clean energy and continuously reducing overall project operating costs.

Stable power supply underpins uninterrupted rendering operations. "Power outages are the biggest enemy of a data center," Chen Anran stated in the China Mobile-operated facility within the park, adding that China Mobile has implemented a triple-layer "insurance" for the facility's power guarantee system. The first layer involves dual-circuit municipal power, with the data center connected to two separate 110kV lines from different substations. The second layer consists of UPS uninterruptible power supplies, which can immediately take over power provision if both municipal lines fail, ensuring computing tasks run stably for at least 15 minutes after a grid failure. The third layer is the diesel generator set, which completes its startup, synchronization, and loading process within the time window secured by the UPS, achieving normal power supply within one minute.

Collaborative Efforts Build a Cross-Regional Computing Resource Pool

Ya'an's geographical strengths can further amplify the benefits of computing cluster effects. Situated on the western wing of the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle, Ya'an is the only non-provincial capital city in Sichuan with direct access to the national backbone network. It has deployed physical-layer three-route exit fiber optic cables, directly connecting to both the provincial trunk network and the national backbone network, with three independent transmission channels established between Chengdu and Ya'an. The two major computing nodes, Chengdu and Ya'an, have formed a hierarchical division of labor with clear functions and complementary advantages. The Chengdu Tianfu core cluster focuses on high-timeliness intelligent computing, handling millisecond-critical services such as training trillion-parameter large models, medical imaging-assisted diagnosis, and real-time urban traffic governance. In contrast, the Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park anchors itself in the green offline computing sector, specializing in latency-tolerant tasks like film rendering, materials calculation, and industrial simulation that do not require immediate response.

In the future, the synergy between the Chengdu and Ya'an computing nodes is expected to deepen further. In terms of solidifying the computing foundation, Ya'an will accelerate the construction of new-generation communication networks and computing networks, building over 2,000 new 5G base stations and advancing the digital transformation of infrastructure such as transportation and water conservancy. The construction of the Chengdu-Ya'an hollow-core fiber will increase metropolitan transmission speeds by 40%, reducing the transmission latency from the Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park to the Chengdu-Chongqing region to 0.9 milliseconds, supporting high-speed responses for cross-regional computing applications. The two nodes are interconnected via the national 400G high-capacity optical transmission channel, simultaneously linking with national computing hubs in Ningxia, Gansu, Guizhou, and other regions. This further breaks down provincial-level computing silos and establishes a cross-regionally dispatched computing resource pool. This differentiated collaborative layout not only unleashes the synergistic potential of the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle but also drives the comprehensive digital infrastructure upgrade of the Sichuan-Tibet Economic Cooperation Pilot Zone.

The Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park is rooted in Ya'an, collaborates with Chengdu, and aims to serve the entire nation. Zeng Zhifu, Deputy General Manager of Sichuan West Sichuan Data Industry Co., Ltd., noted that computing resources in eastern first-tier cities are highly scarce, with quotas prioritized for high-timeliness critical services like financial trading, government emergency response, and real-time industrial control. There simply isn't sufficient redundant capacity to undertake long-cycle, large-scale offline rendering tasks. Moreover, film rendering is not sensitive to the immediacy of computing dispatch, making it naturally suitable for the staggered scheduling of computing resources in western data centers like Ya'an.

"In March of this year, Ya'an was selected as one of the first batch of national pilot cities for metropolitan 'millisecond-level computing' services. The network latency of the Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park is approximately 1.8 milliseconds, far lower than the typical 20-millisecond latency of general civilian networks," the staff member added. Leveraging the all-optical millisecond network built by China Mobile, Ya'an has established a "1-3-5" millisecond computing access circle, making western green computing power as readily accessible as water and electricity.