(JW Insights) Feb 28 -- China's computing power sector is expected to witness speedy growth as tech companies are scrambling to roll out ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence chatbots, which necessitates higher requirements for computing capacity in the process of large language model training and operation, China Daily reported on February 28.

According to investment bank China International Capital Corp, the computing power consumed by ChatGPT training is about 3,640 PF-days — or petaflop days — which means 1 quadrillion calculations per second are needed and will run continuously for 3,640 days.

The market scale of China's computing power industry exceeded RMB1.5 trillion ($215.4 billion) in 2021, with revenue from cloud computing surpassing RMB300 billion ($43.2 billion) and internet data center services over RMB150 billion ($21.6 billion), said the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a government think tank.

Chinese enterprises have ramped up efforts to build intelligent computing centers and bolster the development of ChatGPT-like products and services by offering computing power support.

Supercomputer manufacturer Dawning Information Industry Co, also known as Sugon (中科曙光), participated in China's first integrated computing power trading platform, which was unveiled in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, on February 24.

Cao Zhennan, vice-president of Sugon, said the company has accumulated advantages in large-scale computing infrastructure and computing power resource scheduling. It will optimize computing structure on the trading platform, and improve computing supply capacities for artificial intelligence and scientific engineering projects.

The platform involves a batch of companies and institutions such as Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Technologies and SenseTime. It is part of the country's broader push to channel more computing resources from eastern regions to less-developed but resource-rich western ones..

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba, has launched the world's largest intelligent computing center in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, said China Daily.

The center will provide intelligent computing services for AI-powered large-scale model training, autonomous driving, spatial geography and other AI-related frontier applications, the company said.

(Yuan XY)