In 2024, China's accelerated server market will usher in unprecedented growth. According to the latest report by the International Data Corporation (IDC), the market size reached 22.1 billion US dollars (about 160.655 billion yuan), a year-on-year increase of 134%. This surge not only highlights the surge in demand for computing power in the era of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, but also shows that local technological innovation and changes in the market environment are driving the reshaping of the industry landscape.
1. The rise of the 100 billion dollar market: the layout of core industries is accelerating
With the development of AI, cloud computing, and big data technologies, the accelerated server market size will continue to expand in the coming years. IDC predicts that by 2029, the size of China's acceleration server market will exceed 100 billion US dollars, of which the market share of non-GPU accelerated servers will be close to 50%. At present, the Internet industry is still the largest purchaser, accounting for more than 65% of the market, while industries such as finance, telecommunications, and manufacturing are also increasing investment to build a stronger computing power base.
This growth is not only driven by the demand for AI large model training and inference, but also thanks to the continuous breakthroughs in server hardware and ecosystem construction by domestic manufacturers.
Chart: IDC's forecast for China's accelerated computing server market
2. GPU vs. Non-GPU Competence: Diversification Accelerates Trends
Currently, GPUs are still dominating the market, accounting for 69% of the market. However, the market share of non-GPU-accelerated servers, such as ASICs and FPGAs, has exceeded 30% and is growing rapidly. This diversified competitive landscape means that ASICs and FPGAs are gradually becoming powerful complements to GPUs in specific application scenarios (e.g., efficient inference, edge computing, and low-power computing).
In 2024, more than 2.7 million accelerated computing chips will be shipped in the Chinese market, of which GPU cards account for 70%. It is worth noting that the shipment of China's local artificial intelligence chips has exceeded 820,000 pieces, accounting for 30% of the overall market. This data shows that domestic chip manufacturers are challenging the market dominance of international giants through technological innovation and ecological construction.
3. Market competition pattern: the rise of domestic manufacturers
In the accelerated server market, Inspur, Ningchang, Xinhua III and other companies occupy the top three, accounting for more than 50% of the market share. These manufacturers rely on independent research and development and industrial chain integration to further consolidate their market position.
At the same time, the rapid development of domestic AI chip companies is also reshaping the market competition pattern. By providing cost-effective chip solutions and combining their own software and hardware ecosystems, domestic manufacturers are gradually improving their market competitiveness and reducing their dependence on overseas manufacturers.
4. Technological Breakthrough and Ecological Construction: Improvement of Software Ecology
In recent years, the popularization of open-source algorithms has provided an opportunity for the development of local chips. For example, open-source large models such as DeepSeek have lowered the threshold for enterprises to deploy AI computing power, making enterprises more inclined to use local computing power for model training and optimization.
The report points out that through the adaptation with DeepSeek, local chips have made breakthroughs in the software ecology and further promoted the application of domestic accelerated computing hardware. This not only enhances the market competitiveness of domestic chips, but also makes up for the shortcomings of domestic computing chips in the software ecology for a long time to a certain extent.
5. Future Trends: Computing Power Demand and Technology Evolution
In the next few years, China's accelerated server market will continue to maintain a high growth trend. Key drivers include:
5.1 The development of large AI models: The application of ultra-large parameter models such as ChatGPT continues to increase the demand for high-performance computing power.
5.2 Policy and investment support: Industrial policies and capital investment at the national level will further promote the development of domestic chip and server enterprises.
5.3 Technology upgrading: With the process improvement and architecture optimization, the competitiveness of domestic chips in terms of performance, energy efficiency ratio and adaptability will be further improved.
5.4 Evolution of multiple computing architectures: The application of technologies such as heterogeneous computing (HPC+AI) and integrated storage and computing will accelerate the further transformation of server architectures.
6. Conclusion: Breakthroughs and challenges of domestic chips
The rapid growth of China's accelerated server market is not only the result of technological progress and market demand, but also the embodiment of policy support and capital promotion. With the rise of diversified computing technologies such as GPU, ASIC, and FPGA, as well as the breakthrough in the ecological construction of domestic chips, the market competition pattern is gradually tilting towards local manufacturers.
With the shipment of 820,000 chips, local chip companies have successfully opened a breakthrough in China's server ecology. However, in the face of the technological advantages and market scale effect of international giants, domestic manufacturers still need to continue to invest in technological innovation, industrial chain integration and ecological construction in order to occupy a more stable position in the future market competition.
