Visitors take photos at Sugon's exhibition area during the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in July. CHINA DAILY
A wall of black server racks dominated Hall H2 of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, or WAIC, which concluded in Shanghai last week — the first public global debut of China's first domestically produced 100,000-card AI supercluster, the Dawning 8000 (Dengfeng), which has been named one of WAIC 2026's "Treasures of the Pavilion".
The exhibit signals a systemic shift in China's computing power landscape. Almost every major computing vendor at the conference rolled out supernode products with varying card counts: Chinese tech company Dawning Information Industry, also known as Sugon, showcased its Dawning 8000, Lenovo displayed its supernode products and Huawei unveiled its Atlas 950 SuperPoD.
The race has moved from single-card performance to holistic supernode systems — a fundamental paradigm shift in domestic computing power competition.
Li Liu, vice-president of Sugon, said at a WAIC forum that supernodes are evolving from high-end custom equipment to standardized computing units, with modularization becoming key to large-scale development. "In the future, supernodes will further lower the threshold for high-end computing power, providing foundational support for the large-scale development of the AI industry," he said.
