China is estimated to achieve a projected volume of 48.6 zettabytes in data creation, amounting to over 50 trillion gigabytes.

Operated since September 2020, Chengdu Supercomputing Center is one of the 10 most powerful supercomputers in the world. Last year, the center was listed as the tenth National Supercomputing Center in China in 2021. It manages local data in Chengdu and helps process the growing amount of data generated in cities on the east coast.

"The Chengdu Supercomputing Center is a big infrastructure. With this computing power and our industry know-how, we can help innovative industries calculate their data, such as the new energy industry. We've also filled the vacancy of what was a much-needed supercomputing center in this part of China," said Li Jiajia, the director of operating and maintenance at Chengdu Supercomputing Center.

Li added that the supercomputing center really shines in analyzing large amounts of data that requires much precision in sectors, such as biomedical, aerospace and equipment manufacturing.

More centers are being built in Chengdu. "We use Huawei's Atlas 900 AI Cluster with a computing power of 300 petaFLOPS at half-precision," said Wang Zhiguo, the general manager of Chengdu AI Computing Center.

Both centers use homegrown processing technology with different advantages. "Computing power should be seen as a public resource just like electricity and water. It can be used to analyze all kinds of data," Wang added.

Experts say for less time-sensitive data, Chengdu is an ideal option. "For data that isn't time-sensitive and doesn't need to rely much on the internet such as video rendering and long term data analysis, Chengdu is a great option due to our strong computing power and cheap energy prices," said Zeng Liaoyuan, an associate professor from the University of Science and Technology of China.

Over 60 percent of Sichuan's electricity – where Chengdu is located, comes from hydropower, making it more sustainable and cheaper. On top of that, there is a lot of open lands – making it a perfect place to construct data centers, which meet the country's increasing demand for more computing power.