Shanghai ramps up computing capability to become global computing hub

Shanghai looks to moderately step up its construction of intelligent computing facilities during the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period to build an independently controllable intelligent computing industry, according to official sources.

Shanghai will promote the building of intelligent computing infrastructure at a measured pace in order to lift the city's computing power industry to a new level, create an open and shared intelligent computing ecosystem, and constantly optimize policies and supports for capital and talents, Pan Yan, deputy director of the Shanghai Commission of Economy and Informatization, said during a forum on intelligent computing on Jan 27 in Shanghai.

"Shanghai has achieved an intelligent computing capacity of 120,000 peta-FLOPS — quadrillion floating-point operations per second — enabling the city to build a more complete intelligent computing industry, while accelerating the application of computing technologies across key industries," Pan said.

Calling computing power the productivity core of the digital economy, Wang Xiaoli, deputy Party secretary of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), said computing power has become an important driver of China's economic transformation, upgrading, and the cultivation of new growth drivers.

"CAICT and Shanghai will deepen collaboration to fully support the city's development into a globally influential computing power hub," Wang said.

According to Wang, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has launched a series of measures to promote the construction of computing power infrastructure — including strengthening the foundation of computing power infrastructure, exploring core application scenarios, and innovating new computing power service models.