This morning, the lighting ceremony of SenseTime Intelligent Computing Center was held in the Lingang New Area of Shanghai Free Trade Zone, marking the completion of the first phase of this artificial intelligence computing infrastructure with the strongest design peak computing power in the country and a total investment of about 5.6 billion yuan and the start of operation. SenseTime will carry out large-scale artificial intelligence research and development and industrialization in the Yangtze River Delta, and help Shanghai build an artificial intelligence highland. At the ceremony, the Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology awarded the Center the title of "Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Integration Empowerment Center".
The large facility, which covers an area of 130,000 square meters, will also accelerate the development and application of smart chips such as domestic GPUs (graphics processors). Last year, SenseTime and a number of domestic universities, enterprises and professional institutions jointly established the Artificial Intelligence Computing Power Industry Ecological Alliance, hoping to achieve the goal of "supporting a group of chip companies, cultivating a software ecology, and prospering a group of application development". It is estimated that when all servers are in place in 2024, the proportion of hardware localization in the smart computing center will exceed 50%.
Can complete 1,000 billion parameter model training
Xu Li, Chairman and CEO of SenseTime, introduced that the Smart Computing Center is an important computing power base of SenseTime's AI large device, with a design peak computing power of up to 37.4 billion floating-point operations per second, ranking first in the country and one of the largest supercomputing centers in Asia.
Computing power resources are the basis for artificial intelligence research and development. In April 2018, SenseTime launched the artificial intelligence computing prototype development project. In July 2020, the intelligent computing center started construction in Lingang New Area. In December of the same year, the main structure of the Intelligent Computing Center was capped. It took only 168 days from the start of construction to the capping, which set a new record for the construction speed of Lingang. Today, this large building with the shape of a chip has been completed and stands next to the Two Ports Avenue.
The intelligent computing center can provide large-scale elastic computing power and complete artificial intelligence training of 1,000 billion parameter models. By integrating massive computing resources, the Smart Computing Center will make SenseTime AI large devices like assembly line factories, realize the underlying abstraction of algorithm models for different scenarios, and create a general-purpose service platform with modular platform suites.
In order to protect the data privacy of customers, the intelligent computing center has built an independent physical computer room to achieve physical isolation, and with the help of privacy and security computing technology, it provides customers with resource isolation at different levels such as computing, storage, and network.
Due to a series of green and low-carbon technologies, the power consumption of the smart computing center is expected to be about 10% lower than the average of continental data centers, saving about 45 million kWh per year. It is expected that around 2025, the center will reach the peak of carbon dioxide emissions, and the peak emissions are estimated to not exceed 350,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent; around 2050, it is expected to reach net zero emissions.
EmpowerING AI for industry, research and government
What are the application prospects of The Smart Computing Center? Yang Fan, co-founder and vice president of SenseTime, said that the company will open the technical capabilities of AI large devices to partners through the Intelligent Computing Center, provide cloud services for industry, scientific research and government affairs, and accelerate the digital transformation of all walks of life.
In the industrial sector, customers can use SenseTime's AI devices to produce and deploy automated AI models without the need for deep expertise and capital investment. "For example, we recently talked to a lot of auto companies about AIDC-based collaborations, including autonomous driving and smart cabins." Yang Fan said that many auto companies want to have an artificial intelligence production system including autonomous driving, and with the help of the Smart Computing Center, SenseTime can provide automotive companies with a complete set of algorithm tools and simulation test software systems. "It can be understood that we can help the automobile OEMs to build artificial intelligence production workshops, whether it is automatic driving or intelligent cabins, we can help enterprises build."
In the field of scientific research, the intelligent computing center will be committed to becoming the domestic first-class scientific research and innovation service base, with massive computing power resources, cluster scheduling advantages and a complete artificial intelligence algorithm tool chain, serving the national major scientific and technological infrastructure and scientific research and innovation main body in Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta. At present, SenseTime has reached cooperation intentions with scientific research institutions and universities such as the National Protein Science Center (Shanghai). For example, on the issue of protein folding, artificial intelligence systems have made major breakthroughs in predicting the three-dimensional structure of proteins in recent years, providing a sharp tool for the research of life sciences, drugs, and protein materials. The collaboration between the National Protein Science Center (Shanghai) and SenseTime will allow biologists and artificial intelligence experts to jointly tackle key problems and use AI devices to uncover more mysteries of life.
In the field of government affairs, the synergy between the Smart Computing Center and the Ark City Open Platform will help SenseTime better empower management departments, support the construction of the "one network unified management" system, and accelerate the process of intelligent urban governance. It is understood that SenseTime has provided hundreds of artificial intelligence algorithm applications for Shanghai's "one network unified management", covering a variety of automated supervision scenarios such as garbage overflow, manhole cover loss, damaged light box, bicycle parking, illegal occupation of the road, etc. The iterative production of such algorithms can use the computing power resources of the Intelligent Computing Center in the future.
Software and hardware companies join hands to build domestic GPUs
It is reported that the first phase of the intelligent computing center has 5,000 cabinets, and the second phase is still planning, which is estimated to be 1-2 times the volume of the first phase. Yang Fan said that the follow-up servers in place will use some domestic GPUs to gradually achieve domestic substitution of this artificial intelligence chip.
Artificial intelligence chips can be divided into cloud side, side side, end side and other types. The end-side smart chips applied to the device side are currently relatively high in localization, and the cloud-side chip GPUs applied to the server need to be imported. However, this situation is expected to change in the next 1-2 years, because a number of GPU research and development enterprises have appeared in China, and the follow-up construction of the intelligent computing center provides important application scenarios for domestic GPUs.
GPUs require joint development by hardware teams and software teams. As the largest artificial intelligence software company in mainland China, SenseTime is cooperating with a number of domestic GPU R&D companies to provide them with adaptation software, including a large number of algorithms and software interfaces. At present, a number of cooperation has been completed to complete the software adaptation work, which has greatly improved the efficiency of GPU development. It is expected that in the near future, domestic GPUs will be applied to the intelligent computing center. SenseTime also led the establishment of the Artificial Intelligence Computing Power Industry Ecological Alliance to provide systematic support for the technological innovation of domestic intelligent chips and accelerate the construction of an ecological foundation for the domestic computing power of artificial intelligence.