The AI computing center in Shanghai Photo: Courtesy of SenseTime

The first mega artificial intelligence (AI) computing center in East China operated by Chinese emerging AI firm SenseTime officially started operation in Shanghai on Monday, which is set to become one of the largest AI computing centers in Asia.  

Analysts said that AI computing centers represent indispensable computing power resources for integrating AI with the construction of smart cities and strengthening the development for related industries such as smart healthcare, noting that China is a global leader in AI innovations.

The AI computing center located in Lingang New Area in Shanghai is designed to have a peak computing power of up to 3,740 petaflops, with a petaflop is a quadrillion floating-point operation per second, according to a statement sent to the Global Times by SenseTime.

The AI computing center will form an ecosystem that lowers the barriers for various industries to entry for large-scale AI applications and continuously expand the boundaries of the industrialization of AI. Meanwhile, it will contribute to the local research and development of AI industry in Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta region.

These AI computing centers establish an essential foundation for the application and use of AI technologies by providing strong computing power resources, especially as the country has been ramping up efforts to build smart cities and develop related industries such as intelligent transportation and smart healthcare, Liu Gang, director of the Nankai Institute of Economics and chief economist at the Chinese Institute of New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Strategies, told the Global Times on Monday.

Multiple provinces and regions across China have been stepping up investment and efforts to build AI computing centers in a bid to further enhance the sustained development of local AI computing power. 

Wuhan in Central China's Hubei Province became the first city in China to officially launch an AI computing center on May 31, 2021, which focuses on major AI application scenarios such as smart manufacturing, gene sequencing, and can be linked into many fields including autonomous driving, Chinanews.com reported. 

Meanwhile, AI computing centers in Xi'an, Chengdu, and Henan Province entered construction in 2021, with several cities planning to launch their own local facilities. 

According to an industry report issued by International Data Corporation in December 2021, the overall market size of AI in China reached $2.18 billion with the growth rate increasing 42.2 percent year-on-year. 

Global Times