This illustration photo shows big data and cloud computing technologies. [Photo/VCG]
In a world where computing power may become the next strategic area of competition, China is expected to promote computing applications in multiple industries to gain new momentum under the East-Data-West-Compute project, government officials and industry experts said.
“China’s computing power has increased in recent years and reached a high level worldwide. It is expected to develop faster as it begins to serve more industries and becomes more popular,” said Qian Depei, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, at the China National Computer Congress in Guiyang, Guizhou Province, which ended on Saturday.
Computing power roughly refers to the ability to process data. It is widely seen as a new form of productivity that people can use, just like water and electricity.
“In recent years, the country has experienced an increasing demand for computing power, expanding the scale of digital simulation for traditional scientific research, as well as increasing demand for digital twin technology during industrial modernization and transformation,” Qian said.
In other words, the demand for computing power for “new” applications such as artificial intelligence continues to grow, he added.
The latest figures from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology show that China ranked second in the world in terms of computing power last year, with the country accounting for 27 percent of global computing power. By comparison, the figure in the US was 31 percent.
Although a latecomer to high-performance computing, China now ranks first in the world with about 35 percent of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers.
However, Qian also pointed out that the computing power between supercomputing centers and data centers is relatively isolated, and the related infrastructure should be further improved under the east-data-west computing project.
In the East-Data-West computing project, China is sending data collected from the country’s wealthier eastern regions to the less developed but resource-rich western regions for storage, computation and feedback, which aims to help the country improve its imbalanced digital infrastructure layout and increase the value of data more productively. .
As Guizhou is one of the eight national computing centers of the mega-project, Guiyang Mayor Ma Ningyu told the conference that the city will accelerate the construction of data centers and computing infrastructure to become a national computing center.
“Guyana will strive to improve the efficiency of the use of computing resources and give new impetus to the development of the country’s digital economy, especially considering the opportunities provided by the East-Data-West-Compute project,” said Ma.
By 2025, the number of data center racks and servers in Guizhou is expected to reach 800,000 and 4 million, respectively. Data center racks consist of a physical frame that houses electronic servers, cables, network devices, cooling systems, and other computing equipment.
With the country’s accelerated efforts to develop computing power, Yan Guihai, founder and CEO of chip company Yusur, said in a conference call via video link that the company will push technological advances in data processing units, or DPUs, to offer Chinese solutions for the next generation of the computing power revolution around the world.
