China is looking to the ocean to power its artificial intelligence computing ambitions, as it seeks new ways to meet soaring demand for computing power through underwater data centers. Shanghai’s Lingang Special Area, a government-designated free-trade zone designed to attract advanced manufacturing and hi-tech industries, recently put an underwater data center (UDC) into operation, linked to an offshore wind farm, a first in the world. The UDC, located 10 kilometers off Shanghai’s eastern coast and 10 meters under water, was built by Shanghai HiCloud Technology, a subsidiary of Shenzhen-listed marine navigation and communication equipment company Highlander. With a total investment of CNY1.6 billion and a planned capacity of 24 megawatt, it is viewed as a key pilot project to explore the technical and commercial viability of subsea data centers linked to onshore cloud and telecoms infrastructure. The company said the cluster would be used to power multiple applications including AI, embodied intelligence and autonomous driving. The company said the cluster would be used to power AI scenarios, as well as embodied intelligence and autonomous driving.
The coastal project in Shanghai comes amid increasing efforts by China to look beyond land – to the seas and even skies – to boost its computing power supply amid surging demand for AI. It follows an earlier project to build a UDC off the southern island province of Hainan, also initiated by Highlander. The combination of submarine data centers and offshore wind power could help Shanghai solve computing bottlenecks as AI workloads demand high-efficiency, and low-latency local computing power as Shanghai has limited land resources. The facility that HiCloud built in Hainan, which became operational last year, was installed in a 1,300-ton underwater data cabin equivalent to the weight of 1,000 passenger cars.
The first phase of the UDC project, which finished construction in 2023, would save 26,000 tons of water and 3.4 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, while reducing carbon emissions by about 2,720 tons compared with traditional land data centers of the same size, Li Jiawen, Deputy General Manager of HiCloud, said. But the technology was still in the very early stage. The project faced challenges such as lack of standards, operational and maintenance difficulties, and economic viability, the South China Morning Post reports.
