China on Friday officially put into operation its first high-altitude, cavern-based intelligent computing center at the Lianghekou Hydropower Station in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The project is considered as an innovative practice integrating the nation's "Eastern Data, Western Computing" initiative with clean energy development.

It is powered not only by the world's largest and highest-altitude hydro-solar complementary facility, but also transforms hydropower construction tunnels into natural constant-temperature data centers, achieving dual breakthroughs in ultra-high computing power and ultra-low energy consumption.

The first batch of computing modules put into operation totals six. Currently, the project achieves a peak performance equivalent to the computing power of 240 million desktop computers used for everyday office tasks.

The entire computing modules are installed inside the hydropower station's construction tunnels, where temperatures are significantly lower than outside.

A thermometer at the tunnel entrance shows only 8 degrees Celsius. The tunnels remain cold and dry during winter and spring, with no high-temperature periods in summer, creating a constant-temperature data environment that significantly helps reduce the energy efficiency metrics of the intelligent computing center.

The power usage effectiveness (PUE) of the computing center is kept below 1.2. A PUE value closer to 1 indicates higher energy efficiency and a lower environmental footprint.

For every 1.2 kilowatt-hours of electricity consumed by the computing center, only 0.2 kilowatt-hours are used for auxiliary functions such as cooling and lighting, a level that ranks among the most energy-efficient in China.