The data center has a computing power of 1,420 PFLOPS, allowing autonomous driving models to be trained up to 125 times faster.

(Image credit: CnEVPost)

Chinese auto giant Changan Automobile has partnered with Baidu to build an AI data center in order to train its autonomous driving software, becoming one of the first of the local traditional automakers to do so.

The data center has 1,420 PFLOPS of computing power, allowing autonomous driving models to be trained up to 125 times faster, according to a press release from Baidu today.

For reference, Xpeng (NYSE: XPEV) partnered with Alibaba Cloud in August 2022 to build Fuyao, a smart driving computing platform with up to 600 PFLOPS of total computing power.

With Fuyao's support, Xpeng's self-driving core model has reduced its training time from seven days to less than an hour, the company previously said.

In January, Great Wall Motor-backed startup Haomo.AI Technology Co Ltd unveiled its self-driving computing center, MANA OASIS, with a total computing power of 670 PFLOPS. The computing center was launched by Haomo together with Volcano Engine, a cloud services platform owned by ByteDance.

Changan and Baidu's collaboration on the data center could see GPU resource utilization increase by more than 40 percent after full completion, greatly accelerating the R&D progress of autonomous driving, Baidu said.

(Image credit: Baidu)

As of now, the data center has completed a total of 15,000 AI algorithm model training, according to Baidu.

The data center is Changan's new AI infrastructure, which will provide more efficient technical support and data support for new model development, Baidu's press release said.

Changan is one of the most aggressive traditional car companies in the electrification transition, having already launched new EV brands Deepal and Avatr, and previewed the first model of its new brand Qiyuan in late June.

By 2025, Changan will have invested a cumulative total of more than RMB 80 billion ($11 billion) in vehicle intelligence, innovation, and digital transformation, according to the press release from Baidu.

($1 = RMB 7.2847)

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