A high-performance data center with computing capabilities comparable to some of the world’s top 100 supercomputers was officially launched this month at Lingnan University, school President Joe Qin Sizhao said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a media reception on Tuesday at the university’s Tuen Mun campus, Qin said that the center, which can provide computing power of about 6,000 teraflops, or 6 quadrillion floating-point operations per second, will greatly support the university’s researchers and students as well as the institution’s commitment to be a pioneer in educational innovation.

Qin said the completion of the center marks a key step forward for the university as it strives to provide next-generation computing technologies for artificial intelligence research projects, adding that it can reduce the computing time of some AI projects from several months to just a few hours.

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The establishment of the center was made possible by the nonrecurrent grant provided by the University Grants Committee. Its official name, “Lingnan HPC NexT”, symbolizes the “Nexus of high-performance computing technology,” according to the university.

The second phase of the center, to be hosted soon in the university’s Lingnan Hub, will feature cutting-edge cooling technology, which will substantially lower power expenses and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, Qin said.

Qin said that it is imperative that the university enhance its academic research computing speed as it hopes to align with the government’s emphasis on cutting-edge technology sectors such as artificial intelligence (AI) and data science in recent years.

Talking about the recent popularity of the homemade open-source AImodel DeepSeek, Qin said that the university is actively advocating for integrating AI applications throughout the campus and is closely tracking related research.

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“One of DeepSeek’s most significant breakthroughs lies in its ability to accomplish substantial tasks with limited resources. This presents many opportunities for Lingnan University, enabling us to achieve remarkable feats despite not having extensive resources,” Qin said.

Contact the writer at oasishu@chinadailyhk.com