China has activated what may be the world’s largest distributed AI computing pool alongside a high-speed data network that has been planned for more than a decade, according to an official state newspaper.
The computational efficiency of a 2,000km (1,243-mile) wide computing power pool formed via this network could reach 98 per cent of that of a single data centre, said Liu Yunjie, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chief director of the project, in a report on Thursday by Science and Technology Daily.
Behind the Nexperia crisis and China-Netherlands tech tensions | China Future Tech webinar
Behind the Nexperia crisis and China-Netherlands tech tensions | China Future Tech webinar
China’s best computing centres are sparsely distributed across the country. With this technology they could work seamlessly together to fast-track the development of the most powerful AI models and other cutting-edge technology.
“The implications of this dedicated data highway are revolutionary for scenarios with extremely high real-time demands, such as AI large model training, telemedicine and the industrial internet,” Liu told the outlet.
The Future Network Test Facility (FNTF) is the country’s first major national science and technology infrastructure project in the information and communication sector. After more than a decade of construction, it officially started operating on December 3.
“Training a large model with hundreds of billions of parameters typically requires over 500,000 iterations. On our deterministic network, each iteration takes only about 16 seconds. Without this capability, each iteration would take over 20 seconds longer – potentially extending the entire training cycle by several months,” he said.
