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

by Jane Cai by scmp.com

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.

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.