China’s national computing power network accepts first provinces as it moves to pool data centres to bolster infrastructure

China’s national computing power network has accepted its first batch of provinces as Beijing seeks to pool and build up national digital infrastructure despite increasingly limited access to advanced chips amid US-imposed trade restrictions.

Data centres in southern Guangdong province and the southwestern provinces of Sichuan and Guizhou have been admitted to the “China Computing Net” (C2NET), according to a report by government-backed newspaper Southern Daily that cited a Monday announcement at an industrial event in Shaoguan, Guangdong.

The C2NET was unveiled by the government last May to better consolidate and allocate computing power.

By pulling together regional resources, the network operates with a coordinated computing power of more than 3 exaflops, meaning the ability to perform 3 quintillion calculations per second, the report said.

As a reference, the world’s top supercomputer, the United States’ Frontier system, can achieve a maximal performance of 1.2 exaflops, according to ranking agency TOP500.

Demand for computing power is skyrocketing thanks to the rising popularity of artificial intelligence (AI), and China is trying to ensure a sufficient supply of computing power to support the country’s research and technological progress.