Smart computing to balance east-west resources

Two years after the official launch of the east-data-west-computing project in February 2022, the imbalance in the spatial distribution of computing power resources has greatly improved.

China’s infrastructure construction for computing power has reached a worldleading level, yet a unified large market for standardized and inclusive computing power services has not yet formed. For example, in the economically developed regions of eastern China, the demand for computing power exceeds supply, but the supply capacity and growth potential of computing resources within the region are limited. The western parts of China have resources for the development of large-scale computing facilities, but local demand is insufficient, making resource utilization low. The east-data-west-computing project is expected to address the issues of building a unified market for computing power services and efficiently utilizing resources across the country.

Currently, computing power is accelerating its penetration into fields such as transportation, finance, education, healthcare, technology, and energy. The construction of a nationwide integrated computing power network will empower the digital transformation and upgrading of various industries, promoting the deep development of new industrialization and the digital economy.

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence industries and applications such as large models, China’s demand for intelligent computing power resources is becoming increasingly stronger. In the general artificial intelligence ecosystem, the innovation of algorithms and models is the key, data is the foundation, computing power is the core support, and application scenarios are the driving force. It requires close cooperation and concerted efforts from all parties in the upstream and downstream parts of the industry.

The action plan for the high-quality development of computing power infrastructure, released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and five other departments in October 2023, proposed that by 2025 the scale of computing power will exceed 300 EFlops, of which intelligent computing power accounts for 35 percent. Smart computing centers are becoming a new driving force supporting the rapid development of the artificial intelligence industry and economic growth.

In that process, smart computing centers will have a key role to play. In the context of building a nationally integrated computing system, coordinating the construction of smart computing centers and accelerating the coordinated cooperation of computing resources in the east and west, providing inclusive computing power through smart computing centers will be beneficial for aggregating factor resources and innovative talents in the artificial intelligence industry chain.