China's AI computing power to see robust growth

China's scale of intelligent computing power reached 260 EFLOPS last year and is expected to reach 1,117 EFLOPS in 2027, realizing a compound annual growth rate of 33.9 percent, according to a recent industry report.

EFLOPS is a measurement unit used to determine a computer's speed.

The evaluation report on the development of artificial intelligence (AI) computing power in China for 2023-2024 was released during the 2023 AI Computing Conference, which was held in Beijing on Wednesday.

The market size of global AI servers is projected to increase from 19.5 billion US dollars in 2022 to 34.7 billion US dollars in 2026, according to the report co-published by the International Data Corporation (IDC) and Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co., Ltd.

The report also said that the global share of servers dedicated to running generative AI is likely to rise from the current 11.9 percent of the overall AI server market to 31.7 percent in 2026.

Chinese enterprises generally have a high acceptance of generative AI. Currently, 67 percent of Chinese enterprises have started exploring opportunities for the application of generative AI within their organizations or have begun substantial investments in this area, Zhou Zhengang, vice president of IDC China, said at the conference.

As of August 2023, China has established intelligent computing centers in over 30 cities, with a total construction scale exceeding 20 billion yuan (US$2.82 billion).