Several high-level data infrastructure projects were launched during a computing power conference in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, on Friday to ensure the accessible, usable, and safe operation of the city's data cluster industry.

The projects included a public computing power service platform in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, a provincial-level advanced storage center, and a data aggregation governance and privacy computing platform.

China launched the East Data, West Computing initiative in 2022 to build an integrated national computing network. As part of this effort, Shaoguan, in northern Guangdong, has started constructing a data center cluster. This project will support the development of a unified computing power network for the GBA.

Shaoguan's computing power scale has so far introduced 22 intelligent computing center projects with a total investment of over 60 billion yuan ($8.35 billion), attracting 31 upstream and downstream projects.

The city has developed a capacity to support 120,000 standard racks. It is poised to become the largest computing power aggregation area in South China, according to Chen Shaorong, Party chief of Shaoguan.

The network latency has rapidly decreased to lightning speed, with 13 ultra-high-speed 400G optical networks connecting cities in the GBA.

"The data latency from Shaoguan to Guangzhou is only 1.3 milliseconds and to Shenzhen 1.66 milliseconds, meeting the vast majority of computing power business needs in the Greater Bay Area," said Chen.

Additionally, a data innovation laboratory, a joint project between Shaoguan Data Industry Investment and Development and Huawei Technologies, was also unveiled at the conference.

The laboratory focuses on data elements, talent development, and adaptation centers to help the city integrate data technology and resources and create a new digital industry hub.