Computing power infrastructure key to digital economy

Chinese authorities have unveiled an action plan to build a high-quality computing power infrastructure with the aim of boosting the digital economy. China aims to achieve a computing power capacity of more than 300 EFLOPS by 2025, according to the plan. EFLOPS is a unit of measurement for a computer's speed. For instance, a 1-EFLOPS computing system can complete 1 quintillion floating-point operations in one second. At present, China's computing power capacity is 197 EFLOPS, ranking second globally, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Also, the country's data storage capacity is expected to exceed 1,800 exabytes by 2025, the plan says.

Computing power infrastructure is critical to the development of the digital economy. Among a raft of measures to boost computing power infrastructure was the launch of a mega project last year to establish eight national computing hubs and 10 national data clusters.

Computing power is a new type of productivity that integrates information computing power, network capacity and data storage power. In the era of the digital economy, data resources have become factors of production, and computing power is key to building a strong infrastructure, which in turn is required to promote the deep processing and value shaping of data resources, and boost the development of the digital economy.

To vigorously develop the digital economy and meet the likely exponential growth of application demand in the future, it is necessary to build a strong, high-quality computing power infrastructure.

Computing power has been introduced in manufacturing, transportation, education, aerospace, finance, media and other sectors. Compared with the model of relying on individual enterprises to enhance computing power in certain fields according to their respective business needs, China is focusing on building a nationwide infrastructure of computing power. This means the government will play a leading role in the planning and functioning of the sector.

China should also expedite the construction and improvement of the digital economy infrastructure, including increasing investment to boost computing power and better manage data. Besides, it should improve the policies and rules in this sector, including creating an open institutional environment so enterprises could take the initiative to explore the entire field.

- 21ST CENTURY BUSINESS HERALD