China's “East Data West” computing project is apparently in full swing, with $6.1 billion already invested in eight data centers across the country, and the project is targeted for completion by 2025.
The project was announced in February 2022 with the goal of completing eight national computing centers and 10 national data center clusters to shift more computing resources to China's western regions to process data generated in the east.
It is part of a larger group of projects seeking to improve the country’s computing capacity and speed, with the hope of doubling computing power by 50% by 2025, and the latest announcement shows that work is well underway, with total rack size exceeding 1.95 million racks, up from 1.46 million in March 2024, and a utilization rate of 63%, up 4% from 2022.
Eastern Data Western Computing
The figures were revealed by Liu Liehong, director of the National Data Bureau, in a speech at the recent Big Data Expo 2024.
Liu also revealed that the network latency between the eastern and western core nodes has met the requirements of 20 milliseconds and the power utilization efficiency (PUE) of the newly built data centers is as low as 1.04 in contrast to a global average of around 1.5 PUE.
China's push to dominate the technology sector came around the same time that the United States imposed additional restrictions on technology in China, including restrictions on the export of chips and the import of Chinese-made technology to the United States and its allies.
Recent technological advances such as AI can have a profound impact on everyday life and politics, so the world's superpowers are determined to try and stay one step ahead of each other in the technological race, with the advancement of data centres and network infrastructure leading the way.
