China beefs up computing power by 25% as AI race drives demand
Total computing power in China, a critical infrastructure element for processing data and performing digital tasks, grew 25 per cent in the first half of the year, driven by the needs of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies.
As of June, computing capacity in the country reached 246 EFLOPS, or 246 quintillion floating-point operations per second, according to a report published on Saturday at the annual China Computational Power Conference in Zhengzhou, the capital of central Henan province. One quintillion is 1 followed by 18 zeros and is equivalent to a billion billions.
This represents a nearly 25 per cent growth from 197 EFLOPS a year before, according to data from last year's conference, held in Yinchuan of Ningxia Hui autonomous region. If this pace continues, the world's second-largest economy is on track to meet a target set last year to achieve total computing power of 300 EFLOPS by 2025.
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Among the overall resources, the growth of intelligent computing power used in AI-related tasks surged 65 per cent, the 2024 report said, without revealing the exact size.
China remains the second-strongest computing powerhouse after the United States. The report, compiled by state-backed China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), showed that the US accounted for 32 per cent of the world's total computing power of 910 EFLOPS as of the end of last year, higher than China's 26 per cent. The report counts both government and commercial facilities.
Although the report did not provide updated data on geographical breakdown, Zhao Zhiguo, chief engineer at the Ministry of Information and Technology, said at the event that China "is among the world's best", according to state-backed newspaper Science and Technology Daily.
The US accounted for 32 per cent of the world's total computing power as of the end of last year, higher than China's 26 per cent. Image: Shutterstock alt=The US accounted for 32 per cent of the world's total computing power as of the end of last year, higher than China's 26 per cent. Image: Shutterstock>
He said that the accelerated pace of digitalisation and intelligent transformation of various industries have created "more urgent need" for digital information infrastructure such as computing power facilities.
Zhao added that it is necessary to achieve greater breakthroughs in core technology, including "high-end chips, architecture design, large-language-model algorithms and high-speed transmission protocols."
CAICT director Yu Xiaohui said that the challenge for China's computing industry is that it's still "fragmented", which makes it a challenge to precisely match demand and supply.
To address regional imbalances in digital resources, Beijing in 2022 launched a project called Eastern Data and Western Computing to seek a balance between the more prosperous areas of eastern China and the energy-rich west. The plan includes building 10 computing clusters across the country.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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