The Peng Cheng Laboratory has commenced the test operation of 10,000 petaflops of domestic artificial intelligence computing power at its large-scale scientific site, Peng Cheng Cloud Brain III, located in Shenzhen. This was announced at the opening ceremony of the World Computing Network Conference 2026 (WCNC 2026), held in the Nanshan district of Shenzhen on October 15 and 16, according to the laboratory's official website.
The laboratory stated that this step transitions Cloud Brain III into the 'construction while operating' phase. Currently, 10,000 petaflops of capacity are online, which are already being used to train large domestic models and function as a specialized AI research network for science, while the remaining capacity is still being installed.
According to the Chinese tech publication IT Home, the fully completed system is planned to reach a capacity of 16,000 petaflops, or 16 EFLOPS, and is described as the largest planned AI computing complex in China. Regarding the architecture, the laboratory's announcement only mentioned that the system utilizes an innovative domestic intelligent supernode architecture designed to eliminate data transmission bottlenecks.
IT Home, citing public reports, noted that Cloud Brain III is built on Huawei's Ascend 384 SuperPoD architecture; however, the laboratory itself did not name the chip supplier in its official release. In late December 2025, the laboratory activated the first phase of computational boards with a total capacity of 4,500 petaflops and associated equipment for testing.
Infrastructure Significance and Development Plans
Lu Yutong, Director of the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, told local media that Cloud Brain III provides the city with a solid foundation for inter-district computational connectivity and broad access to computing services. He also added that high-speed connections will extend to Hong Kong and Macau. This facility is designed as a key node of the China Computing Network (C2NET), a national pilot program that, according to the laboratory director Gao Wen, has been underway for four years.
In his main presentation, Gao outlined the following goal, named ZPG: zettaflop-scale computing, petabit-scale communication speed, and gigawatt-scale green energy. He described a three-stage path for the computing network: integrating computing resources, distributing tasks across regions, and ultimately providing computing on demand, similar to electricity.
Two informational documents were also presented at the conference. One, concerning the development of the global computing network, was prepared by the Peng Cheng Laboratory in collaboration with the WCNC alliance. The second, regarding the coordination of computing and energy systems, was created jointly with the Huairou Laboratory and contains a roadmap until 2035, with the period from 2026 to 2030 focusing on planning and foundational establishment, and from 2031 to 2035 focusing on coordinated operation and system optimization.