China eyes nationwide AI computing network as tech race with US heats up

China is making progress in unifying the country’s scattered data centres into a nationwide computing network to drive artificial intelligence applications, according to the data centre builders.

China’s Open Data Centre Committee (ODCC), an organisation representing the country’s key AI infrastructure investors such as Alibaba Group Holding and China Telecom, hosted a three-day conference this week to discuss how to transform the country’s far-flung data centres into one unified network.

Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

As of the end of June, China had built 10.85 million standard AI stacks, or sets of servers and tools for AI applications, up 30.7 per cent from a year ago, according to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). The growth was driven by continued AI computing investments by state-owned telecommunications network operators - including China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom - as well as private Big Tech firms such as Tencent Holdings, Baidu and Alibaba.

While China is denied access to advanced US chips, the country’s data centre builders are finding innovative ways to boost computing performance and share best practices.

He Zekun, a member of ODCC’s network working group, said at the conference that there had been breakthroughs in improving inter-chip communications in server clusters that use a mix of foreign and domestic semiconductors, which was important for AI training and inferencing as large amounts of data are exchanged through chips.