The Wuhan Supercomputing Center, China's largest container-like computing facility, was recently connected to the national computing network and is in its final launching stage, reported China Daily on August 17.

Located in central China's Hubei Province, the landmark center will offer computing power of 50 petaflops in the initial stage, equivalent to 100,000 high-performance computers operating simultaneously, and is expected to eventually provide 200 pflops in total.

The center has already been connected to the China Computing NET, or C2NET－a major national computing cluster that links supercomputing networks and artificial intelligence data centers across the country, including those in cities like Beijing, Xi'an, Nanjing, and Qingdao.

"The move is a big step forward for the country's east-data-west-computing project. By leveraging local prowess in distributed computing, mass storage, AI computing power platforms, and big data, the center will significantly drive computing power nationwide," said Feng Dan, a professor at the School of Computer Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

The east-data-west-computing project involves China sending data gathered from the more prosperous eastern regions of the country to less-developed but resource-rich western regions for storage, calculation, and feedback, which aims to help the country improve imbalances in the layout of digital infrastructure and maximize the value of data in a more productive way.

The Wuhan Supercomputing Center also adopted a new way of using container-like modular prefabricated boxes with integrated circuits and pipes laid in the box prior to being joined together, which shortens construction periods by one-third.

China plans to construct ten exascale computing systems by the end of 2025. Although a late entrant to the high-performance computing field, China now tops the world with around 35 percent of the world's top 500 most powerful supercomputers and is quickly building a network of national supercomputing centers, where people can use computing power just like water and electricity, said the China Daily report.