China has reported a staggering amount of domestic artificial intelligence power, pointing to what some experts say could be a “dark pool” of compute thousands of times larger than its public reports suggest.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), China has achieved 1,882 exaflops – short for exa floating-point operations per second – which translates to 1,882 quintillion, or billion billion, calculations per second.
The figure is more than 6,000 times higher than the country’s computing power as reflected in the Top500 list, one of the few available benchmarks for comparing China’s supercomputing progress with other countries, especially the United States.
While the two are not directly comparable, and the Germany-based ranking of the world’s fastest supercomputers is often seen as an underestimate, the latest data released by the MIIT on Tuesday suggests China’s computing power is rising fast.
Unlike China, the US – which dominates the Top500 – does not publish a single national figure for AI computing power as most of the infrastructure is owned by private companies and measured using different standards.
According to estimates from the Stanford Institute for Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence and other policy analyses, the US holds roughly 50 to 75 per cent of global capacity and hosts the largest concentration of AI-focused data centres.
Zhang Yunming, MIIT vice-minister, said China was building a nationwide, multilayered computing grid to serve as the backbone of its AI industry, distributing power across national, local and edge centres.
The goal was to make this power widely available and affordable for small businesses while ensuring that the power grid and data centres worked in sync to support the industry’s growth, he said in Beijing.
According to the latest Top500 ranking, released in November, China’s fastest known system was below 0.1 exaflops. The US topped the list with the El Capitan supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, at about 1.8 exaflops.
Despite its modest showing, it is likely that China is producing more of the world’s fastest supercomputers, as Jack Dongarra, a Turing Award winner and co-founder of the Top500, told the South China Morning Post in 2023.
China had stopped submitting details of its most advanced machines amid rising geopolitical tensions and US export controls, Dongarra said, adding that previously Chinese institutions and companies were enthusiastic about taking part.
China’s 1,882 exaflops may appear larger because it is measured differently from general-purpose computing power. It uses a format designed for AI, which counts simpler calculations and produces much higher performance figures than the more demanding standard used in the Top500 ranking.
Once adjusted to the latter standard, 1,882 exaflops would fall to roughly 120 to 230 exaflops, but still remain far above the capacities reflected in public supercomputer benchmarks.
The Chinese format is designed for AI-focused processing, which counts simpler calculations and produces much higher performance figures than the more demanding standard used in the Top500 ranking.
AI computing power in China is expanding much faster than general-purpose capacity. A report last year by International Data Corporation and Inspur projected an annual growth rate of 46 per cent between 2023 and 2028 – more than double the pace.
According to a report released last week by the Stanford institute, the performance gap between leading AI models in China and the United States has largely closed, with Chinese systems now competing closely with their US counterparts. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
