Country striving to build up computing muscle

China's computing power sector is expected to witness speedy growth as tech companies are scrambling to roll out ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence chatbots, which necessitates higher requirements for computing capacity in the process of large language model training and operation, experts said.

Computing power, or the ability to process data, is widely regarded as a vital foundation for bolstering the development of the digital economy and a new engine to unleash the potential of data as a factor of production, they added.

According to investment bank China International Capital Corp, the computing power consumed by ChatGPT training is about 3,640 PF-days — or petaflop days — which means 1 quadrillion calculations per second are needed and will run continuously for 3,640 days.