Green Plan to Boost Computing Power
By ZHONG Jianli
China plans to increase the scale of its computing power to more than 300 EFLOPS (equal to one quintillion floating-point operations per second) by 2025, with the proportion of intelligent computing power reaching 35 percent.
The recently released action plan for high-quality development of computing infrastructure also said the speed and efficiency of the computing network will be improved. Transmission speeds between critical computing facilities should not have a latency of more than five milliseconds.
Computing infrastructure is fundamental to the development of the digital economy. By the end of June this year, China's computing power has reached 197 EFLOPS, up from 180 EFLOPS in 2022, ranking second in the world. Its storage power has exceeded 1,080 exabytes, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The plan also called for optimizing the distribution of national computing hubs and data center clusters, and promoting coordinated and complementary development of computing resources in the eastern and western areas.
In the western computing hubs and areas with a good foundation for AI development, smart computing centers will be constructed to upgrade intelligent computing power.
The policy encouraged Chinese enterprises to build computing facilities overseas, especially in countries along the Belt and Road Initiative, to enhance their global service capabilities.
New businesses and application models should be developed in such fields as industry, finance, health, energy and education.
In addition, green computing infrastructure will be promoted, while the deployment of high-efficiency and low-carbon storage equipment will be accelerated. The plan encouraged the use of green energy, including wind and photovoltaic power, in building computing hubs.
