Promotion of computing power development key to economic growth

China's top industry regulator said on Monday that it will introduce new policies to promote the high-quality development of computing power infrastructure, further strengthen top-level design and enhance the comprehensive supply capacity of computing power.

The move came as China's computing power industry is expected to usher in new development opportunities for major Chinese tech companies that have rolled out ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence chatbots, which necessitates higher requirements for computing capacity in the process of large language model training.

Xie Cun, head of the information and communication development department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at a news conference on Monday that, by focusing on the development needs of computing power, more efforts will be made in enhancing independent innovation capabilities in areas such as computing architecture and computing algorithms, and in strengthening the research and development of key products such as CPUs, GPUs and servers.

Zhang Yunming, vice-minister of industry and information technology, said that, in the era of digital economy, computing power has penetrated into all fields of production and life, like water and electricity, and is injecting new momentum into the digital transformation of all walks of life.

According to calculations by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the scale of China's core computing power industry reached 1.8 trillion yuan ($251 billion) in 2022. Every 1 yuan invested in computing power will drive economic growth of 3 to 4 yuan in GDP.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the government of Ningxia Hui autonomous region will jointly hold the 2023 China Computing Power (Infrastructure) Conference in Yinchuan from Aug 18 to 19.