Zhongwei to have more intelligent computing centers

Zhongwei in Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region will step up efforts to establish a big data industry center and build itself into a hub for the nation's computing power sector, as part of a broader push to bolster the development of the digital economy, said its mayor Ma Honghai.

Ma, a deputy to the 14th National People's Congress, said in an interview with China Daily that Zhongwei boasts huge energy reserves such as wind power and water resources, and its cool climate is suitable for building large data centers.

According to him, the city will speed up construction of data infrastructure, including the establishment of 17 intelligent computing centers to increase its computing power supply.

The number of standard racks in data centers is expected to reach 260,000 and its total computing power will exceed 210,000 PFLOPS, or petaflops, he said.

PFLOPS is a metric for measuring a computer's performance.

Meanwhile, Zhongwei will boost the integration of digital technologies with a wide range of fields, and speed up the construction of a number of digital projects such as digital workshops, intelligent factories and smart campuses to promote the high-quality development of traditional industries, he noted.

Ma said more efforts will be made to bolster the development of the whole industrial chain related to computing power, including IT and network equipment manufacturing, as well as data storage, computing, processing and application.

China launched the east-data-west-computing plan in 2022, a megaproject involving the construction of eight national computing hubs and 10 national data center clusters, to channel more computing resources from the country's eastern regions to its less developed, yet resource-rich western regions.

Ningxia is among eight national computing hubs, with Zhongwei included in the 10 national data centers. The project is conducive to promoting green development and utilizing green energy in the western regions, and continuously optimizing the energy efficiency of data centers, experts said.

Ma said currently Zhongwei has established the country's first batch of Wanka level intelligent computing bases, with the number of data center racks reaching 121,000, and GPU(graphics processing units) computing cards surpassing 88,000. The city's total computing power has reached 44,000 PFLOPS.

Wanka refers to a high-performance computing system composed of 10,000 or more GPU computing accelerator chips that are mainly used to train and fine-tune AI models.

Computing power, which refers to the capacity of a computer or computer system to execute complex computations and data processing tasks, is key to activating new quality productive forces in the digital economy era and unleashing China's new growth momentum.

Ma also said the city's GDP has grown by 5.5 percent on average in the last three years, and that its GDP had increased by 5. 8 percent year-on-year in 2024, ranking third in the region.

The city has also made great strides in technological innovation, with the number of national high-tech enterprises reaching 60 and valid invention patents climbing to 516 in 2024, up 17 percent year-on-year, Ma added.