Report: China, US computing power gap shrinks

Zhou Zhen'gang (right), assistant deputy general manager of IDC China, and Zhang Dong, deputy general of Inspur, launch the report in Beijing on Feb 4, 2021. [Photo/China News Service]

China shrank its gap with the US in computing power according to an assessment report on 2020 global computing power co-released by Inspur and IDC in Beijing on Thursday.

The US scored 75, ranking first, followed by China with 66, Japan with 55, Germany with 52, and the UK with 47. The report said although there are still gaps in terms of computing efficiency and application level between China and the US, the gaps are shrinking for all indicators as China is growing faster than the US. China's artificial intelligent computing power has been in world's leading position.

The report found computing power is closely correlated to economic growth. With 1 percentage point improvement in computing power, the digital economy and the GDP will increase 3.3 per thousand and 1.8 per thousand, respectively.

The share of AI computing power to the general computing power rose year-by-year in the world. China's driving effect is most significant among the sampled countries. Nearly 50 percent of the expenditure growth in the AI computing market between 2015 and 2019 were from China, the report said.

Computing power is becoming the core driver for digital economy, said Zhou Zhen'gang, assistant deputy general manager of IDC China. The globe is now in a multiplying period of digital transformation, the earlier one realizes computing capacity is an economic facilitation and the earlier one engaged in building computing infrastructure, the more likely one is capable to occupy the advantages.

In the next few years, emerging technology will grow into the overriding forces to improve computing power, especially the AI computing power driven by artificial intelligence, said Zhang Dong, deputy general of Inspur. As data amount surging and algorithm going complicated, computing power will be the key factor to define the AI's limits, he added.