China plans to boost national compute capacity thirty percent by 2025

From 230 Exaflops to 300, with Tesla a part of the plan for energy storage, - and cars

China has offered a glimpse at the processing power of its national compute capacity, and pointed to plans to grow it by 30 percent this year alone.

Details of China's current capacity emerged in recent days at the Global Digital Economy Conference 2024, where Wang Xiaoli, a representative of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, revealed that China has over 8.1 million datacenter racks in operation and that they house kit with combined processing power of 230 exaFLOPS.

State-owned media reports of Wang's remarks referred to a 2023 plan to reach 300 exaFLOPS "by 2025."

Just how China plans to add 70 more exaFLOPS to its national compute fleet in coming months wasn't discussed. That's a live question given state media reported a jump from 180 exaFLOPS in 2022 to 197 in August 2023.

Eleven months later, China's exaFLOPS count has risen by 33 – suggesting adding 70 in the "by 2025" timeframe would represent a considerable acceleration.

One of the state media reports suggests Tesla has a part to play in China's surge. It quotes Shanghai-based cloud computing datacenter service provider Yovole Network as having adopted "hydrogen energy, photovoltaic storage, indirect evaporative cooling and liquid cooling technologies" to power its bit barns. Yovole Network also, as of April, "partnered with Tesla to apply their Megapack energy storage technology at our intelligent computing center."

That mention of Tesla came on the same day that Chinese media noted the US automaker's electric buggies have found a place on lists of approved public sector procurements.

"Several state-owned enterprises in the Shanghai pilot free trade zone have recently procured a batch of Tesla Model Y vehicles for corporate use," wrote News.cn.

Readers may recall that the European Union recently slapped tariffs on Chinese EV-makers, citing unfair government subsidies. News.CN's coverage of Tesla features officials remarking that the Yankee EV-maker dealing with Chinese government entities "shows China's equal treatment of domestic and foreign enterprises" and highlights how access to Chinese markets represents an opportunity for international businesses.

That opportunity is of course not available to many of the international businesses who could help China build that 70 exaFLOPS it wants in production in coming months.

Wherever the kit needed to reach China's goal comes from, Beijing is touting the build as helping to transform its economy enabling wider deployment of AI workloads – and allowing rural areas to cash in on the boom in computing. ®