GuShiio.com ① After the year, the computing power market became popular again. The volume of consultations on computing power equipment rental and purchase increased significantly, and user demand was still concentrated on Nvidia computing cards.
② Although many interviewees said that demand has not affected supply, the price of computing cards has increased, and DeepSeek has changed the already stable computing power market.
③ The vacancy rate of smart computing centers has been reduced, and it is expected that the role and value of smart computing centers will be further demonstrated.
Financial Union, February 18 (Reporter Fu Jing)“I have already received 11 needs consultations in the morning, and several of them are to meet DeepSeek deployment.” Recently, the person in charge of Berlin Cloud, a computing resource information sharing platform, disclosed to a reporter from the Financial Union. Although DeepSeek R1 once raised concerns about excess computing power, its rapid and extensive deployment and application in the industry has helped the AI computing power market become popular again two weeks after its start in the following year.
A reporter from the Financial Union interviewed many industry insiders and learned that at present, the volume of consultations on the rental and purchase of computing power equipment has increased significantly, and demand is still concentrated on Nvidia computing cards, especially the H-series computing cards. Although many interviewees said that demand has not affected supply, the price of calculation cards has increased. At the same time, the vacancy rate of smart computing centers has also decreased.
Demand is concentrated on the H series
According to a customer demand form provided by the person in charge of Berlin Cloud to the reporter of Financial Union, the customer needs it meets are mainly concentrated on the Nvidia H200, and the 4090 and A100 are also popular models. In terms of delivery time, many customers requested delivery in the near future (end of February and early March), and commented on words such as “relatively urgent” and “delivery in batches”. The most urgent needs required delivery within one week.
According to observation by a reporter from the Financial News Agency, H series products have been quite popular in the computing power leasing market recently. The person in charge of Berlin Cloud said that the H series has always been the hottest among high-performance computing in the AI field. In addition, she told the Financial Union reporter that “the 4090 and 5090 series have the highest market share and the best liquidity.”
A reporter from the Financial Union noted that a customer seeking to rent 128 H-series units also gave clear rental plans. One of the plans mentioned that “the computing center provides an API interface for a full-blooded version of the DeepSeek R1 model.”
A dealer mainly engaged in Nvidia computing cards told the Financial Union reporter,”Many users are currently deploying DeepSeek, and the demand for small and medium-sized computing power is increasing.” He suggested,”Users locally deploy DeepSeek, and it is more appropriate to choose A100 and H20 or above computing cards.”
On the eve of the Spring Festival this year, the release of DeepSeek R1 triggered a sharp drop in Nvidia’s share price. However, judging from the performance of the aforementioned computing power rental market, the computing power demand in the past two weeks after the Spring Festival holiday is still concentrated on Nvidia. A few days ago, media reported that some models of Nvidia GPUs in stock by a dealer had been emptied.
In fact, among the demand list obtained by the Financial News Agency reporter from Berlin Cloud, Huawei Shengteng 910B is also favored by several demand parties.
“Overall, the emergence of DeepSeek has not significantly reduced the demand for high-end computing power chips in the China market. Instead, it has promoted the structural growth of computing power demand through its advantages of efficient reasoning and low-cost training.” Lu Jing, partner and managing director of Sullivan Greater China, said in an interview with a reporter from Financial News Agency.
Looking forward to the market outlook, Lu Jing believes that Nvidia’s high-performance computing power is still an important part of the market that cannot be ignored, especially in industry applications that require extremely high computing power, it is still the first choice of many companies and research institutions. But at the same time, DeepSeek will promote the rapid penetration of domestic chips in the market.
Card counting prices are now growing
At the same time, card counting prices showed an increase.
“Many primary suppliers have overpriced, causing demand sides to exceed budgets.” The person in charge of Berlin Cloud told the Financial News Agency reporter. However, the aforementioned dealers said that the card counting price has only increased “slightly.”
In fact, people in the industry chain reported at the end of last year that the prices of various NVIDIA GPUs dropped slightly. It can be seen that the boom in DeepSeek has changed the already stable computing power leasing market.
It is worth noting that the relevant person in charge of Internet infrastructure, big data and cloud service provider Huitian Network Technology Co., Ltd. said in an interview with the media last week,”The popularity of DeepSeek has driven the popularity of large model companies. Now there are many industry model companies asking us about renting cabinets, but it is hard to find one cabinet, and it is hard to find computing equipment servers.”
This news attracted a lot of attention. Regarding the company’s mention of “one cabinet is hard to find”, a reporter from the Financial Union conducted multiple verification. Many interviewees said,”There is demand now, but it is still being digested and it has not yet reached the point where it is hard to find.”
The person in charge of Berlin Cloud also believes that the authenticity of “one cabinet is hard to find” needs to be verified, while the difficulty of computing equipment servers is due to the mismatch between supply and demand. “I feel that the demand for consultation is stronger than before. This is true. As for the transaction, I don’t think the response will be that quick.” She also said that the demand side is mainly concentrated in Beijing and Shenzhen.
A reporter from the Financial Union also sent an email to Huitian. com for confirmation, but as of press time, there was no reply.
Reduced vacancy rate in smart computing centers
“The current vacancy rate in smart computing centers has decreased.” The aforementioned dealer told the Financial News Agency reporter.
Lu Jing also told the Financial News Agency reporter that DeepSeek not only contributed to the explosion of the reasoning market, but also promoted the gradual resumption of use of some previously vacant domestic smart computing centers.
A reporter from the Financial Union reported in October last year on “Five Questions about the Current Situation of AI Intelligent Computing Centers| Industry Research mentioned that some practitioners revealed that “judging from the degree of computing power digestion in the early stage of construction, head enterprises should be 80%, scientific research universities should be around 30%-40%, and the degree of computing power digestion in market-oriented construction should be around half.”
However, some analysts recently told reporters from the Financial News Agency that there are still some smart computing centers with a utilization rate of only 20%.
Lu Jing believes that the reasons for the low actual utilization rate of smart computing centers are mainly attributed to two aspects. First, the early prediction of computing power demand was too optimistic. The scale of the construction of the smart computing center is too large and the construction speed is too fast, but the actual market demand has not kept up in time; second, there is a lag problem in the supporting construction of the computing power technology ecosystem. While the hardware of the smart computing center is being constructed, the ecosystem of related application software, management platforms and other computing power technologies has not been improved simultaneously, resulting in the inability to effectively match and fully utilize hardware resources.
Lu Jing looked forward to reporters from the Financial Union that with the rise of domestic technologies such as DeepSeek and the expansion of application scenarios in the future, the utilization rate of smart computing centers is expected to gradually increase. At the same time, as market demand becomes further clarified and the technological ecosystem gradually matures, the role and value of smart computing centers will further emerge.
