By the first half of 2024, China's total computing power has reached 246 EFLOPS, with the scale of intelligent computing accounting for over 30% of the total computing power. Rao Shaoyang believes that as a new type of information infrastructure, intelligent computing will exhibit characteristics of scalability, platformization, and greenization in the future.
"Star Daily" September 30th News (Reporter Li Mingming) The rapid development of artificial intelligence has brought about a huge demand for computing power, driving global competition for performance iteration and scale expansion in intelligent computing under factors such as large models.
Recently, at the China Telecom Computing Power Application and Industrial Empowerment Sub-forum of the 2024 China Computing Power Conference, the China Telecom Research Institute released the "Intelligent Computing Industry Development Research Report (2024)" (referred to as the "Report"). The report shows that by the first half of 2024, China's total computing power has reached 246 EFLOPS (2460 trillion floating point operations), with the intelligent computing scale accounting for over 30% of the total computing power.
After the conference, regarding the current situation of China's intelligent computing industry, the journalist of "Star Daily" interviewed Rao Shaoyang, Director of the Institute of Strategic Development at China Telecom Research Institute. He pointed out that China's intelligent computing service market is accelerating. Innovative service models represented by computing power leasing, computing platforms, intelligent clouds, etc., are constantly emerging, with the market size growing rapidly, reaching 19.4 billion yuan by the end of 2023.
(Rao Shaoyang, Director of the Institute of Strategic Development at China Telecom Research Institute)
China's intelligent computing service market had reached 19.4 billion yuan by the end of last year.
Computing power is divided into three types: ordinary general-purpose computing power, supercomputing power, and intelligent computing power. Intelligent computing power refers to intelligent computing capabilities, which are an important foundation driving the development of technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and the Internet of Things.
Intelligent computing power, as a new type of information infrastructure, is the core driving force for the intelligent transformation of thousands of industries. China's smart computing service market is ushering in unprecedented development opportunities.
Regarding the current situation and characteristics of China's smart computing industry, Rao Shaoyang believes that the smart computing industry covers chips, servers, data centers, platforms, applications, etc., with a long industry chain and significant agglomeration effects, becoming the core driving force for the digitalization and intelligent transformation of thousands of industries.
**In recent years, under the dual drive of policies and the market, China's smart computing industry has shown three major characteristics:**
Firstly, there is a surge in demand. Incubation of large models with billions and trillions of parameters is driving the continuous explosive demand for intelligent computing power.
Secondly, the quantity and quality of the smart computing industry supply are both rising. The scale of computing power is growing rapidly. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology data, as of May 2024, the scale of computing power has reached 246 EFLOPS, ranking at the forefront globally. Breakthroughs in key technologies of the industry chain such as chips, operating systems, computing frameworks are continuously being made, and the localization capabilities are steadily improving.
Lastly, with the accelerated formation of the smart computing service market, innovative service models represented by computing power leasing, computing power platforms, and intelligent clouds are emerging continuously. The market size is rapidly expanding, reaching 19.4 billion yuan by the end of 2023.
A industry expert attending the event also told a reporter from 'Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily' that although the total scale of China's computing power industry ranks among the top in the world, it faces issues such as low utilization rate, scattered computing resources, and computational latency. Therefore, the potential in the field of smart computing power is enormous.
The application of smart computing industry is accelerating its penetration from the internet field to the entire industry.
The continuous expansion of computing power and the enhancement of intelligent computing capabilities have also driven the surge in the application of computing power.
Regarding the progress of the intelligent computing industry application and the economic value it brings, Rao Shaoyang stated that there are mainly two points. First, the application of intelligent computing in China is accelerating its penetration from the Internet field to finance, manufacturing, transportation, medical care, and all industries, becoming an important support point for the digitalization and intelligent transformation of traditional industries. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has organized the selection of typical cases for the national new-type computing center, with over 5000 innovative computing applications.
Secondly, artificial intelligence represented by large models is accelerating its implementation. Edge applications such as mobile assistants, autonomous driving, humanoid robots, etc., will become the new entry points for the explosion of intelligent applications.
Rao Shaoyang mentioned that as a representative of new productive forces, intelligent computing is accelerating its deep integration with the real economy, giving birth to new industries and formats such as intelligent manufacturing, autonomous driving, and becoming an important engine for the sustainable development of the modern industrial system.
So, what are the future trends and directions of the intelligent computing industry? Rao Shaoyang believes that as a new type of information infrastructure, intelligent computing will demonstrate characteristics of scaling, platformization, and greenization in its future development.
In terms of scaling, the accelerated incubation of large models with parameters in the hundreds of billions and trillions will drive the rapid construction of intelligent computing infrastructure, and the scale of intelligent computing clusters will evolve towards tens of thousands of AI chips or even hundreds of thousands.
In terms of platformization, low-cost and inclusive use of intelligent computing will become a trend. Building a computing power service platform together upstream and downstream in the industry will facilitate precise supply-demand matching, enhance resource efficiency, further reduce the cost of computing for small and medium-sized enterprises, and improve the accessibility level of computing power.
In terms of green transformation, the development of the intelligent computing industry exhibits characteristics of high density and high energy consumption. Strengthening cross-sector cooperation, exploring new models such as power-computing synergy, will facilitate the green and low-carbon development of the intelligent computing industry.
It is worth mentioning that the above report also points out that the collaborative development of computing power and electrical utilities has become a new trend. The high energy consumption and high density of the Asia Vets Center have exacerbated the structural energy bottleneck, making collaborative layout, planning, and scheduling of computing and electricity a new choice.
In recent years, China's energy efficiency level has continued to improve. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the average PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of data centers has dropped to 1.47.
