GuShiio.com The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made comprehensive arrangements for “improving the system and mechanism for developing new productive forces according to local conditions.” Against this background, all regions and cities across the country are promoting the development of new productivity and exploring productivity innovations brought about by emerging industries and emerging technologies.
In 2024, with the launch of the “Artificial Intelligence +” action, the AI development experience of the “Touyan” city will become extremely important. Among them, Hangzhou’s AI story may be very worth learning from and reference.
In the “14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Artificial Intelligence Industry in Hangzhou City”, Hangzhou’s goal of becoming an artificial intelligence city with global influence is clearly stated. In July last year, Hangzhou City issued “Several Measures to Support the High-Quality Development of the Entire Artificial Intelligence Industry Chain”, proposing five aspects: the construction of computing power facilities, the open ecology of models, the empowerment of the real economy, the development of the entire industrial chain, and the support of the talent team. 14 specific measures support the development of the AI industry. Among them, the focus is on solving computing power technology and building computing power infrastructure.
Hangzhou has turned AI computing power into the starting point of the AI industry, empowering AI companies through computing power development, prospering the AI ecosystem, and cultivating AI talents.
If you want to understand this, you can start from the Hangzhou Artificial Intelligence Computing Center and walk into the stories of Hangzhou AI companies and AI entrepreneurs.
Computing power reflects the spring breeze of Hangzhou AI.
The story begins in Hangzhou’s High-tech Zone (Binjiang). Binjiang District is located on the south bank of the lower reaches of the Qiantang River, connected to Xiaoshan Strict in the southeast, and the Qiantang River in the northwest, facing West Lake District and Uptown across the river. People living here have listened to the Qiantang Tide for thousands of years. Today, AI developers and entrepreneurs in Binjiang District hear the echo of AI computing power on the banks of the Qiantang River.
Binjiang District is the core area of Hangzhou’s National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Development Pilot Zone. How can we promote the development of the AI industry from the source? The construction of AI computing power is the standard answer given by the times.
Today, pre-training large models are the mainstream of AI technology. Large models require large-scale AI computing power as support. Data shows that AI computing power demand has increased by more than 150,000 times in the past four years, and the characteristics of large models have made enterprises ‘computing power demand show the elastic characteristics of large AI computing power demand during training and relatively small computing power demand during reasoning deployment. In this case, self-built computing power pools are not cost-effective for most companies. Adopting public and inclusive intensive AI computing power is becoming a mainstream choice. At the same time, computing power is a new productive force in the digital economy era. According to estimates, for every 1 yuan invested in computing power, it will drive an average of 3-4 yuan of economic output.
Faced with the significant contradiction between supply and demand of AI computing power, Binjiang District decided to turn the computing power challenge into a development opportunity for the local AI industry. As early as 2021, Binjiang District launched the Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center project, becoming Hangzhou’s first public service-nature AI computing infrastructure.Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center has also firmly chosen an autonomous computing power base and adopted Shengteng AI cluster to provide public inclusive computing power to governments, enterprises, scientific research institutions, universities, etc.。Another construction idea of the center is to not only provide computing power for the industry, but also empower the growth of the AI industry through diverse methods, and provide enterprises with services such as AI model training and promotion, application incubation, industry promotion and talent training.
On May 20, 2022, the first phase of the Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center project was completed, and the launch of 40P computing power was also announced. As of now, the computing power of Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center has been expanded to 240P scale.Based on the operating model of one center and four platforms, Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center has opened up links such as politics, industry, learning, research, finance, referral, and application, assisting the Intelligent Computing Center in building a business closed-loop model and promoting the aggregation of the local computing industry chain.
At the same time, the AI model attracted global attention at the end of 2022, and a new round of AI industry explosion followed. The Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center has been put into use, fully meeting the development needs of local AI companies in Hangzhou.
The intelligent tides echoing along the Qiantang River demonstrate the accuracy and predictability of the “Riverside Strategy”.
The gathering of an emerging industrial chain requires the cooperation of the right time, place and people. The same is true for Hangzhou’s development of the AI industry.First of all, AI computing power is the only requirement for a new round of scientific and technological revolution and the first level that all AI companies cannot circumvent.
When the wave of big models is on the rise, when the AI industry and AI companies need AI computing power most, it is the responsibility of Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center to provide them with abundant AI computing power for all benefits. Especially for large models with huge parameters and providing large-scale AI computing power, it is the first challenge for intelligent computing centers. In the story of real intelligence, we can see how Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center completed this task.
Real Intelligence is a leading enterprise in the field of agents and RPA. It is a national-level specialized and innovative small giant enterprise, a national outstanding patent award-winning enterprise, a provincial high-tech research and development center, and an AI quasi-unicorn enterprise that has been rated as an AI quasi-unicorn enterprise for four consecutive years. It is committed to providing enterprises and governments with digital employee solutions, accelerating digital transformation, and helping customers achieve leapfrog growth. The real TARS series of large models it has built are the company’s core support in the AI field.
In a truly intelligent plan, the strongest version of the TARS model will reach 70B, which is also a very large model parameter in the global AI industry. To this end, intelligence really needs to obtain 120P AI computing power. However, the company found that the high-end AI computing hardware on the market was very tight at that time, and the overall price hype atmosphere was strong, which brought huge cost pressure.
At this time, the emergence of the Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center solved key problems. After understanding and communicating, I really intelligently learned that the smart computing center had 150P computing power at that time, which could just meet the large-scale computing power needs of large-scale model training. Therefore, after careful consideration and a series of technical preparations, Real Intelligence finally completed the training of the 70B model in only 2 months based on the public computing power provided by the Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center.
In fact, for AI start-ups like Real Intelligence, it takes courage to abandon their previous technical routes and choose the autonomous AI base represented by the Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center. Can the model be trained, can the final training effect meet expectations, and are the time and labor costs invested appropriate? These cost-effective issues are something that all AI companies need to face.
Fortunately, the Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center did a lot of work during this period, and through a lot of technical communication and answering questions, it helped to intelligently resolve relevant doubts. At the same time, these repeated communications and discussions also allowed companies to see the sincerity from the emerging smart computing ecosystem, and ultimately made them feel unable to refuse.
Sun Linjun, chairman of Real Intelligence, said that the company’s previous large models were all completed in the traditional AI computing power architecture. Migration requires relatively large changes in the technology stack and the underlying framework. Algorithm engineers still have some doubts and rely on the framework changes. There are potential costs, but after careful evaluation, they feel that it is still worth doing, which will be much better for later controllability. The actual step forward also verified the speculation at the time. It may seem like there is a threshold, but it is actually worth it
It is worth mentioning that in its cooperation with Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center, Real Intelligence not only effectively solved the problem of computing power, but also saw Binjiang’s determination and potential to develop the AI industry, so they chose to land their subsidiaries in Binjiang. In this process, according to Hangzhou’s “Several Policies on Promoting the Innovative Development of New Generation Artificial Intelligence and Promoting Industrial Ecological Construction”(Hang Gaoxin [2023] No. 5) and other documents, it is true that Intelligent has enjoyed one-on-one discussion, tax exemptions, and talent policies and other related industry support. It not only helps enterprises reduce the cost of core AI computing power, but also obtains a long-term path for common development with the local AI industry.
As of September 2024, Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center has completed surveys of more than 800 universities, enterprises and scientific research institutions this year, with research needs exceeding 5000P. By providing inclusive computing services to 190 enterprises and institutions, it empowers Ten industries including smart IoT, smart finance, smart medical care, intelligent manufacturing, and enterprise services.
Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center has begun to become a center of the circle. Let the extension of Hangzhou’s AI industry and ecology continue to expand and draw a larger circle.
The aggregation and development of emerging industrial clusters is inseparable from the comprehensive impact of local policies, economy, business environment, and cultural atmosphere. These factors jointly define the geographical location of the industrial ecology from multiple dimensions. Want to promote the comprehensive growth of Hangzhou’s AI industry,Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center cannot just provide AI computing power, but needs to provide supporting services from multiple dimensions, work with enterprises to broaden the AI landing radius in specific fields, and work with enterprises to make the AI cake bigger.
General diagnostic medicine has a clear feeling about this.
Hangzhou Quanzhen Medical Technology Co., Ltd. is a national high-tech enterprise focusing on AI medical artificial intelligence products and information technology services. The all-clinic AI intelligent medical assistant based on the large language model developed by all-clinic medicine is currently the first medical AI product in China and the only company that has launched AI intelligent medical assistant products in nearly 100 large comprehensive tertiary hospitals.
In clinical medical scenarios, there have always been challenges such as complex patient medical treatment procedures, excessive time consuming for doctors to write medical records, and unfavorable follow-up. The implementation of large models in the medical field can help assist patient guidance, medical record writing, remote consultation and other medical work, and plays a key role in improving medical efficiency. As a result, general medical medicine seized this opportunity and became the first company in China to implement large-scale model technology in clinical medical scenarios.
In this process, general medical medicine found that hospitals have common needs in the process of digital intelligence, that is, whether they choose public cloud services or build a local digital intelligence system, they strongly hope to choose an autonomous AI computing power base. This is very important for the long-term development of digital intelligence in the medical industry and the general trend of scientific and technological self-reliance.
Hospitals have computing power and intelligent service needs, general medical medicine has AI capabilities, and Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center has computing power. The three parties have complementary relationships at multiple levels. On this basis, comprehensive medicine and intelligent computing centers have launched diversified ecological cooperation. As a result, the comprehensive medicine and intelligent computing center have achieved mutual exchange of needs in customer relations and achieved ecological win-win results. The cooperation with the Intelligent Computing Center has become a powerful boost for comprehensive medical medicine to expand the market. The development of comprehensive medicine in the medical field has also brought the value and influence of smart computing centers to the medical industry. With the cooperation of many parties, autonomous AI computing power and AI large models will be allowed to penetrate into medical scenarios and broaden the industrial radius.
When more companies achieve full exchanges, cooperation and industrial chain collaboration under the comprehensive empowerment of the Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center, AI will change from a technological opportunity to a real industrial ecosystem, and autonomous AI computing power will be able to increase the number of vertical industries.
All development competitions for AI technology are ultimately a competition for talents.The “human harmony” that can cultivate talents and support talents is also the core pillar for the long-term development of the AI industry ecosystem.
To this end, Hangzhou City issued policies such as the “Notice on Several Measures to Support the High-Quality Development of the Entire Artificial Intelligence Industry Chain”, emphasizing the strengthening of independent training of artificial intelligence compound talents. The development and growth of Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center actually witnesses the growth of talents related to the autonomous AI ecosystem. Wang Chao, founder of Kuang Wei Ju Rui, can be said to be a representative of Hangzhou’s artificial intelligence compound talents.
Hangzhou Kuangwei Jurui Technology Co., Ltd. is an industry-leading provider of AIoT development platforms and software and hardware solutions, focusing on building a complete set of AIoT service systems integrating data collection, computing and control equipment, and access platforms. The MegaFlow it has built is a full-stack development cloud platform for the AIoT industry, covering the entire process of AIoT application development through zero-code and modular methods.
Its founder and CEO Wang Chao is a witness and participant in Hangzhou’s AI industry and Shengteng Ecology. Wang Chao has chosen high-performance computing as his research direction from undergraduate to doctoral degree, and is very concerned about topics related to computing autonomy. Since 2018, he has noticed Shengteng Ecology. At that time, he was in the same school as the laboratory and could be said to be one of the first developers to complete the migration to Shengteng.
For many years, Wang Chao has always been a developer of Shengteng and has developed a large number of related applications. In 2022, he won the gold medal in the first Shengteng Innovation Competition.
This kind of experience made him naturally choose the direction of Shengteng when he embarked on the road of entrepreneurship, so he naturally participated in the Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center with Shengteng as its base. From the establishment and launch meeting in 21 years to the official launch in 23 years, Wang Chao and Kuang Wei Jurui witnessed every growth of the smart computing center and naturally became users of its computing power and ecological builders.
In Wang Chao’s words, Kuang Wei Jurui and the Intelligent Computing Center are childhood sweethearts. He witnessed the growth of the Intelligent Computing Center and Shengteng Ecosystem, and the Intelligent Computing Center also provided 0 to 1 support for his entrepreneurial projects.
The deep-seated core of Hangzhou’s “independent training of artificial intelligence compound talents” is vividly demonstrated in Wang Chao’s story.
It can be seen from this that the growth of Shengteng Ecology and the growth of Hangzhou’s local AI industry are highly consistent with the growth of the new generation of compound AI talents:A career with a future and potential will attract talents to join and move forward together, and their creativity and contribution will in turn accelerate the growth and maturity of the AI industry and the AI talent training system.
At present, Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center has held a number of competitions and talent training activities. In October 2024, the Zhejiang Kunpeng Shengteng Industry and Talent Innovation Forum and the Kunpeng Shengteng Innovation Competition 2024 Zhejiang Finals Award Ceremony was held in Hangzhou. This event has become an important stage for AI talents to understand the Shengteng ecosystem and seize AI opportunities.
In March 2024, Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center held the 2024 Shengteng AI Golden Seed Training Class·Entering the Pan-Internet Industry (Hangzhou Station); in October 2024, it held the “2024 Shengteng CANN Technology Industry-Operator Development Special Session (Zhejiang University of Technology Station)”, these activities provide key assistance for cultivating local composite AI talents.
Today, Wang Chao will encourage his classmates and colleagues to actively use Shengteng and access Shengteng Ecosystem. The flower of talents rising to the ecology is now in full bloom.
In the stories of these witnesses, we can summarize the multiple values brought by the Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center:
For enterprises, smart computing centers can solve problems and bring development.The demonstration effect demonstrated by the smart computing center has made AI companies realize that they can help companies reduce cost burdens and obtain diversified support, so they are willing to choose the smart computing center and the city of Hangzhou.
Further, for Hangzhou’s AI ecosystem, the smart computing center can become a stage and link.It connects Hangzhou’s AI companies and customers through activities, exhibitions, competitions and other forms, forming a prosperous industrial circle, making Hangzhou’s AI industry a source and gathering place for new productivity.
Further, for scientific and technological self-reliance, the smart computing center can become a fire and beacon.Enterprises can step into the door of an autonomous AI ecosystem through the platform of the smart computing center, thereby anchoring the direction and accumulating strength for technological self-reliance and self-reliance in the AI era.
Wang Chao said that for AI application companies, computing power is the foundation of everything.
Hangzhou’s AI industry, which is based and starting point on the Intelligent Computing Center, has chosen a development path with a solid foundation, active operations, and significant demonstration effects.
The spring breeze of Hangzhou AI today may be the autumn and thousands of miles for the development of new productivity tomorrow.
