Beijing has launched a public computing platform to support China’s artificial intelligence (AI) development at a time when the US dials back its export restrictions on advanced semiconductors key to training and developing AI technologies. doing.
The Beijing AI Public Computing Platform, or Shangzhuang Project, is run by state-backed Beijing Energy Holding (BEH), with the goal of “intensive computing power” facing the city’s tertiary institutions, research facilities, and small and medium enterprises. Deficiency” is to be removed. According to a post published on BEH’s WeChat account, medium enterprises.
The launch of the platform on Tuesday marks a major milestone in the Chinese capital’s rapid AI initiative to nurture a group of local champions in the technology industry, including OpenAI’s ChetGPT and Google’s Bard. The quest to create local competitors for the US is being challenged by strong US pressure. On Chinese access to advanced semiconductors.
Leveraging its strength in the energy sector, BEH said the Shangzhuang Computing Platform will offer 500 petaflops of computing power in the first phase of the program.
Petaflops are a measure of computing power. Frontier, the world’s most powerful supercomputer developed by the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has a peak performance of 1,194 pflops.
BEH aims to increase computing power to 1,500 pflops on its Shangzhuang platform in the second phase, which will go online by the first quarter of next year.
It also said it is looking to fully power its computing platform with green energy in the future, without specifying a timeline.
On the occasion of Shangzhuang’s unveiling, BEH signed agreements with Chinese tech companies including Alibaba Cloud, a unit of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post, as well as AI startup Zhipu AI, green energy and According to WeChat post to cooperate in various fields, public cloud to computing infrastructure and digital economy development.
The establishment of BEH’s computing platform follows Beijing’s municipal government’s commitment to provide state-sponsored computing resources to AI firms.
In mid-May, Beijing Municipality unveiled a plan to pool resources and develop an innovative ecosystem to strengthen its position in AI development. It also called on top public cloud service providers to collaborate and pool their computing power for use by Beijing-based research facilities and companies.
The Chinese capital is already home to a third of the country’s core AI startups, the local authority said earlier this year.