Photo: Courtesy of Yu Xiaohui

As China is making rapid progress in computing power, it is necessary to build a national unified computing power service market, a political advisor said at the annual two sessions.

China's computing infrastructure construction has reached the world's advanced level, and the total scale of computing power ranks second in the world, Yu Xiaohui, head of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) and a member of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), told the Global Times on Tuesday.

In 2023, the total size of China's data center racks reached 8.1 million standard racks and the scale of computing power reached 230 EFLOPS, Yu said.

EFLOPS is a measurement unit used to determine a computer's speed and is vital for technology advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality.

China aims to boost its aggregate computing power by more than 50 percent by 2025, according to an action plan released in October 2023 to promote high-quality development of the country's computing power technology.

According to the Government Work Report released on Tuesday, a push is needed to develop future-oriented digital infrastructure and a nationally unified computational system.

A national unified computing power service market is crucial for China's digital economy and AI innovation, Yu said.

Although China ranked second in the scale of computing power globally, there are challenges such as a lack of accurate matching between supply and demand, and regional disparities in computing power resources, Yu said.

For example, there are currently over 5,000 computing power providers with different technical systems, infrastructure, and interfaces. And while China's eastern regions have strong demand but lack resources, the western regions have resources but low demand and utilization rates.

Yu suggested that it is necessary to give full play to the advantages of the large national market and the successful experience of internet development to build a large service market for computing power.