Updated
Updated · South China Morning Post · Sep 8
China Targets 9,800 Eflops of AI Capacity by 2030, Backing 100,000-Card Clusters
Updated
Updated · South China Morning Post · Sep 8

China Targets 9,800 Eflops of AI Capacity by 2030, Backing 100,000-Card Clusters

2 articles · Updated · South China Morning Post · Sep 8

Summary

  • 9,800 eflops is China’s 2030 target for intelligent computing capacity under a new five-year MIIT plan, alongside 3.8 trillion yuan in cumulative information-infrastructure investment from 2026 to 2030.
  • 100,000 accelerator-card clusters are part of the buildout, with the plan also calling for orderly deployment of 10,000-card facilities, application-specific inference capacity and better support for domestic chips.
  • 2,185 eflops of capacity were already in place at end-June—up 177% from a year earlier—and China had built 52 intelligent computing facilities with more than 10,000 accelerator cards.
  • 2,450 eflops by end-July shows the expansion is already accelerating, but China still needs to more than quadruple June capacity to hit the 2030 goal.
  • The push extends the 2022 East Data, West Computing project, which routes power-hungry workloads to western regions through eight national hubs, 10 data-center clusters and three power-computing coordination zones.

Insights

Will massive underwater data centers and experimental optical networks be enough to bypass foreign tech limits and hit 9,800 exaflops?
Can China's homegrown chips power a $532 billion AI infrastructure boom without triggering a massive energy and water crisis?