Beijing to push subsidies for local firms to buy China-made chips to shore up city’s computing infrastructure
- The city will provide an undisclosed amount of subsidies to help local firms buy China-made graphics processing units for computing services
- These services will form part of an envisioned ‘smart computing infrastructure’ that the nation’s capital intends to complete by 2027
In a draft policy document published on Wednesday, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology said the city will provide an undisclosed amount of subsidies to help local firms buy graphics processing units (GPUs) made by domestic manufacturers to “expedite the supply of controllable intelligent computing resources”.
The amount of subsidy provided to firms will be in proportion to the investment needed to build computing services, according to the draft, which did not specify how such projects would be measured.
“By 2027, [Beijing] will achieve self-sufficiency over smart computing infrastructure … with overall performance on par with leading domestic standards”, the draft said.
The draft policy’s focus on domestic-designed and manufactured GPUs – the preferred chips used in data centres for AI development projects that require high-performance systems – shows how mainland authorities are scrambling to build up computing resources in spite of US tech restrictions.