The total scale of computing power center racks in use nationwide exceeds 8.3 million standard racks, with a total computing power scale of 246EFLOPS (EFLOPS refers to performing billions of floating point operations per second), ranking among the top in the world; the average energy utilization efficiency of computing power centers in China has dropped to 1.47, creating 246 national green data centers; and the application of computing power in multiple fields such as industry, education, healthcare, and energy has exceeded 13000, laying a solid foundation for sharing digital development achievements on a larger scale and at a higher level. "On September 28, the opening ceremony of the 2024 China Computing Power Conference was held in Zhengzhou, Henan. Zhao Zhiguo, Chief Engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, released a series of latest data on computing power development at the conference. Zhao Zhiguo stated that the pace of digital, high-end, and intelligent transformation in various industries is accelerating, and there is an urgent need for new digital information infrastructure represented by computing power facilities to smooth the flow of factors and the "arteries" of economic circulation. Reasonable allocation of computing power, including general computing, intelligent computing, and supercomputing, is the fundamental support element in the era of artificial intelligence. Driven by the demand for large-scale model training and inference, the global competition for computing power iteration and scale expansion is hot. The "China Comprehensive Computing Power Index Report (2024)" released at this conference shows that by the end of 2023, the total scale of global computing power infrastructure will reach 910EFLOPS, a year-on-year increase of 40%. Yu Xiaohui, President of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, introduced that from the perspective of artificial intelligence models, the demand for intelligent computing power has increased by more than 10 billion times in the past 20 years (from 2003 to 2023), constituting the main driving force for computing power growth. On the global ranking of computing power scale, China and the United States rank in the top two. Yu Yingtao, Chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup and President and CEO of New H3C Group, stated that in the era where "computing power is national strength and intelligence is the future", intelligent computing has become the main track of global high-tech competition. This year, global investment in generative artificial intelligence has increased nearly tenfold compared to last year, and we predict that China's computing power scale will further increase sharply from 2024 to 2027, "said Yu Yingtao. Zhao Zhiguo proposed to strengthen planning and design, and coordinate the "growth in quantity" and "improvement in quality". Improve the diversified configuration mechanism, formulate development plans for emerging industries such as artificial intelligence, build a number of intelligent computing centers, and reasonably allocate the proportion of general computing, intelligent computing, and supercomputing. The development of the computing power industry still faces challenges. While the computing power industry is thriving, the challenges it faces cannot be ignored. In Yu Xiaohui's view, China's computing ecosystem is still relatively fragmented, and the demand and supply of computing power cannot be perfectly matched. Yu Yingtao said that many places have made advanced deployments for computing infrastructure, but under the trend, it is still necessary to maintain a "cold thinking determination". He suggested objectively calculating the demand for computing power, coordinating the layout of intelligent computing centers, and taking small steps to continuously improve the mechanism of trial and error tolerance to avoid investment waste; Compared to investment and construction, the operation and management of computing power centers are more important. Regarding the development of the computing power industry, Yu Xiaohui suggests optimizing the layout of computing power, strengthening the interconnection of technology and computing power into a network, solving the problem of demand and supply mismatch, and focusing on the coordinated development of technological innovation and industrial ecology. Zhao Zhiguo stated that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will steadily enhance the comprehensive strength of China's computing power industry from four aspects: planning and design, innovation driven, application cultivation, and security assurance, and continuously improve the empowerment effect of computing power. Specifically, we need to improve the interconnection mechanism, establish rules for computing power interconnection programs, market rules, and quality inspection rules, and promote the formation of a development pattern that uses a computing power large market system to serve the construction of a unified large market. In addition, Zhao Zhiguo emphasized the need to accelerate the research and development of key core technologies, promote greater breakthroughs in basic software and hardware technologies such as high-end chips, architecture design, large model algorithms, and high-speed transmission protocols, and establish a sound standard system for the computing power industry; Accelerate the industrial transformation of innovative achievements, carry out the "strong computing power foundation unveiling and leading" initiative, and explore the development path of deep integration of scientific and technological innovation and industrial innovation. The 2024 China Computing Power Conference, with the theme of "Gathering Intelligence to Lead the Future of New Computing", is hosted by the News and Propaganda Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. The "Computing Power China · Innovation Achievement Exhibition" was unveiled at the same time. (New Society)