A striking light-blue glass cube with an edge length exceeding 10 meters, has emerged as a landmark in the Hefei National High-tech Industry Development Zone. 

Housing 1,500 advanced computing servers, the facility operates around the clock, executing 1.2 quintillion calculations per second. It is named "Chaohu Mingyue," the supercomputer of the Hefei Advanced Computing Center.

Hefei Advanced Computing Center's Chaohu Mingyue supercomputer. [Photo/WeChat ID: hefeigaoxinfabu]

Launched in June 2021 under the Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, this critical facility underscores computing power's role as the cornerstone of digital transformation and economic growth. 

In recent years, Hefei has built a next-generation computing ecosystem anchored by facilities such as the Hefei Advanced Computing Center, Hefei AI Computing Center, Feixing No. 1 computing cluster, and the Hefei Classical-Quantum Hybrid Computing Center.

Now functioning as a heterogeneous computing platform blending supercomputing, AI, and quantum capabilities, Chaohu Mingyue serves leading institutions including the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Grand Union of Innovation, alongside industry giants like iFlytek, NIO, JAC Motors, Gotion High-tech, and BGI.

Since its 2021 launch, the platform has supported over 700 academic and industrial entities, powered more than 6,000 research projects, and completed over 10 million computing tasks.

In April 2024, the center achieved a global milestone by integrating three domestically developed quantum computers, establishing the world's first classical-quantum hybrid computing hub. This innovation merges quantum parallelism with classical supercomputing's numerical precision, breaking efficiency barriers in complex problem-solving.