China activates massive distributed AI system spanning 1,243 miles nationwide

China just switched on what may be the world s largest distributed AI supercomputer, and it spans more than 1,243 miles. The country has activated a massive, nationwide optical network that links far-flung data centers so efficiently they can work almost as a single giant computer, according to Science and Technology Daily.

The system forms a 1,243-mile-wide pool of computing power capable of achieving 98 percent of the efficiency of a single data center, Liu Yunjie, chief director of the project and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told the state publication. China s top computing facilities are scattered across the country. Connected through this new optical backbone, they can now act as a unified machine designed to accelerate AI model training and other compute-heavy research.

Nationwide compute fusion Liu said the implications of this dedicated, high-speed data highway are revolutionary for scenarios with extremely high real-time demands, such as AI large model training, telemedicine and the industrial internet. The backbone is part of the Future Network Test Facility (FNTF), China s first major national infrastructure project in the information and communication sector.

After more than a decade of development, it officially entered operation on December 3. Researchers say the facility significantly cuts both training time and cost for AI models.According to Liu, Training a large model with hundreds of billions of parameters typically requires over 500,000 iterations.

On our deterministic network, each iteration takes only about 16 seconds. Without this capability, each iteration would take over 20 seconds longer. He also noted that the platform is ideally positioned to serve the national East Data West Computing project, which shifts data processing to China s energy-rich western regions.

Decade-long national build FNTF’s development began in 2013 as part of China’s long-term national science infrastructure roadmap. The facility now spans 40 cities with more than 34,175 miles of optical transmission lines, enough to wrap around the Earth one and a half times. Operating around the clock, it supports 128 heterogeneous networks and 4,096 service trials in parallel, making it one of the most extensive testbeds ever deployed.

The project team has created 206 international and domestic standards, secured 221 invention patents, and built what they describe as the world’s first distributed large-scale network operating system. Liu said the network will eventually be opened to sectors including industrial manufacturing, energy, power, and the low-altitude economy. Its capabilities were demonstrated at last week s launch ceremony, when a 72-terabyte dataset from FAST, the world s largest single-dish radio telescope, was transmitted across 621 miles in just 1.6 hours.

Over the regular internet, the transfer would have taken about 699 days. The ultra-fast transmission was enabled by a deterministic network channel that guarantees dedicated bandwidth, ultra-low latency, and near-zero packet loss.

When researchers overloaded a parallel 42 Gbps standard channel, speeds collapsed below 1 Gbps, while the 50 Gbps deterministic link stayed at full capacity. A deterministic network operates like a precise train timetable, where every data packet arrives on schedule, state media reported. Wu Hequan, another member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering involved in evaluating the project, told Science and Technology Daily that the technologies behind FNTF had already supported the development of 5G Advanced and 6G.

Going forward, both research institutions and enterprises will be able to test various new technologies on this platform, he said.