China: China building 'super engine' computing power network.

Storyline China building 'super engine' computing power network China's development of its computing power network looks set to continue after a strong showing last year, according to a recent report from the country's National Data Administration. The report shows that China's intelligent computing power scale topped 1.5 million PFLOPS at the end of last year, the second largest pool of high-end AI computing capacity in the world. Going forward, direct investment into the network, including into information technology equipment and civil engineering projects, is expected to reach about 150 billion U.S. dollars. The project will also drive the growth of industries like AI, autonomous driving, the low-altitude economy, and synthetic biology. A scientist with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Shenzhen said the robust computing power provides huge support for their research and development. Yan Jianbin, researcher, Agricultural Genomics Institute in Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences: "Now, computing power has become a 'super engine' for synthetic biology research. In the research of biosynthetic enzymes for an anti-cancer drug, we conduct on-site computing and inference here, drastically cutting the research and development cycle from months or even years to just days or hours." According to the National Data Administration report, by the end of last year China had more than 13.7 million standard racks of computing facilities, and 42 large intelligent computing clusters under construction. [Restrictions: No access Chinese mainland]