A project signing ceremony between Yangquan government and Baidu Inc takes place in Yangquan city, on Nov 21. [Photo/Shanxi Daily]

Yangquan city in Shanxi province, together with Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc, is set to develop a world-class data center. 

They will also develop the first urban road and highway automatic driving and intelligent vehicle infrastructure cooperative systems test field in China, according to a project signing ceremony held in the city on Nov 21.

The city signed partnership agreements on the second phase cooperation accord between Baidu Cloud Computing (Yangquan) Center project and the project in Shanxi (Yangquan) demonstration zone for the auto-driving and intelligent vehicle infrastructure cooperative systems with the company at the ceremony. 

The Baidu Cloud Computing Center project officially settled in Yangquan in 2012.

The first phase of the project, with a total investment of 4.7 billion yuan ($668.07 million) and a total construction area of 12 hectares, is Baidu's first large-scale data center project which hosts more than 160,000 servers. 

Officials said it leads in Asia in terms of data storage scale, computing power and environmental protection and energy conservation.

The second phase, with an investment of 1.4 billion yuan and a construction area of 8.6 hectares, plans to add 40,000 servers. 

Officials said it will provide strong support for searches, intelligent cloud services, artificial intelligence and the intelligent driving sectors. They added that it is of great significance for Shanxi province, to build itself up as a leading data center cluster in China. 

The groundbreaking ceremony for the second phase of Baidu Cloud Computing (Yangquan) Center project is held in Yangquan Economic and Technological Development Zone in Yangquan city, on Nov 21. [Photo/Yangquan Daily]

As for the construction of a demonstration zone for auto-driving and intelligent vehicle infrastructure cooperative systems, Yangquan has been introducing core AI technologies from Baidu in recent years to promote the industrial layout of automatic driving and the further development of the new generation information technology industry.

Officials said the newly signed project will be carried out by Yangquan government, Baidu, Shanxi Transportation Holdings Group and Shanxi branch of China Mobile Communications Group. 

Among those joining the planning and design of the demonstration zone is the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the Shanxi Transportation Science Research Institute, college of transportation engineering at Tongji University in Shanghai and the China Mobile (Shanghai) Research Institute. 

Officials said the demonstration zone project will fully integrate cutting-edge technologies such as AI and edge computing. 

It will select the designated urban road sections of Yangquan city and some sections of Yangquan-Mount Wutai Highway for intelligent upgrades, and build remote-control intelligent vehicle infrastructure cooperative systems and big data analysis platforms. 

Based on the 5G communications network, it will carry out applications such as automatic driving and traffic management.