China aims to bring mega computing network online by next year in data power push

Top agencies must ensure computing hubs contribute most of country’s computing power by 2025 in race for hi-tech dominance
Plan seeks to consolidate and allocate computing resources to boost digital economy, close gap between China’s east and west

China’s Communist Party

Jane Caiin Beijing

Published: 8:08pm, 4 Jan 2024

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A nationwide computing power mega project in China will be up and running by next year, the National Data Administration (NDA) has said, as Beijing seeks to boost support for artificial intelligence and other digital technologies in its competition with the United States for hi-tech dominance.

The integrated computing power network will bring national computing hubs together into a pool of general-purpose, intelligent and supercomputing power to be used by regional data centres and the “Eastern Data and Western Computing” project, launched in early 2022.

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The network is intended to address regional imbalances in digital resources – between the more prosperous areas of eastern China and the energy-rich west – according to the NDA, which was set up in October to improve support for the digital economy.

“The computing power gap between the east and west has narrowed in recent years, but there are still problems to be addressed,” state news agency Xinhua on Wednesday quoted an unnamed NDA official as saying.

The problems centre on imbalances in the distribution of general computing, intelligent computing and supercomputing power across national computing hubs.

Other issues include inadequate security in data centre clusters, as well as limited dispatching ability and low network transmission quality, which restrict data processing workloads in the east from being shifted to data centres in the west, according to the official.

“Better synergy between eastern and western regions, as well as governments and companies, is needed to improve China’s technological prowess,” the official said.

The directive to “thoroughly implement” the Eastern Data and Western Computing project and speed up construction of a nationwide integrated computing power network was issued by Beijing last week.

Under the order, the National Development and Reform Commission, the NDA, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the National Energy Administration will work together to ensure that national computing hubs contribute most of the country’s computing power by 2025.

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The agencies must also make certain that the network’s core technology will be reliable and secure, the computing centres are highly efficient, and that at least 80 per cent of their power is provided by green energy.

Under the mega project, China has established eight national computing hubs, in the western province of Gansu, southern province of Guizhou, northwestern autonomous regions of Inner Mongolia and Ningxia, as well as four in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta region, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area and the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle.

Computing power is the pillar of the digital economy and is key to developing large language models, the technology used to train AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT.

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Amid US export controls on chipmaking equipment, China has aimed to achieve total computing power of more than 300 exaflops by 2025, a rise of more than half from 2023, according to an action plan released by the MIIT last year.

An exaflop is a unit of measurement for a computer’s speed. A computing system of 1 exaflop can complete 1 quintillion floating-point operations per second. By 2022, China’s computing power had reached 197 exaflops, ranking it second globally after the US, the MIIT said, without giving the number for the US.

China and the US were the top two countries listed on the 2022-2023 global computing power index, released by Tsinghua University, International Data Corporation and China’s leading big data provider Inspur last year.

The index is compiled to forecast technological trends by tracking the development of comprehensive computing power, computing efficiency, applications and infrastructure in 15 countries representing technological leaders, followers and starters. The US topped the list last year, followed by China, Japan, Germany, Singapore and Britain.