WAIC 2026: Domestic Computing Power Shifts from Single-Chip Competition to System Efficiency

The 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), held in Shanghai from July 17 to 20, spotlighted domestic computing power. Multiple vendors showcased system-level solutions such as supernodes, heterogeneous hybrid inference, and full-stack interconnect, signaling a shift in China's AI infrastructure competition from single-chip specs to system efficiency and ecosystem synergy.

Supernodes Become Mainstream, System-Level Collaboration Key

Huawei, ZTE, Baidu AI Cloud, Enflame, and Muxi exhibited supernode products. ZTE's OEX orthogonal architecture supernode integrates 128 GPUs per cabinet, reducing interconnect costs via zero-cable design, and partnered with Biren and Muxi to launch the Matrix supernode, winning the WAIC SAIL Star award. Baidu AI Cloud's Tianchi supernode emphasizes full-stack innovation, leveraging Kunlun chips, Qianfan platform, and ERNIE models to form a real-load-driven feedback loop, achieving 25% higher throughput for Tianchi 256 and 50% inference efficiency improvement. Moore Threads introduced a fully domestic supernode interconnect stack covering Scale-Out, Scale-Up, and optical interconnect, and jointly demonstrated with Biren the IBGDA solution enabling direct GPU-to-RDMA NIC communication, with measured small-message throughput significantly improved and latency nearly halved.

Heterogeneous Hybrid Inference Addresses Domestic Chip Shortcomings

SenseTime's large model infrastructure proposed a heterogeneous hybrid inference scheme that separates Prefill and Decode phases, using high-end chips for the Decode bottleneck and domestic chips for Prefill, with one high-end chip driving about 30 domestic chips. This improves domestic chip MFU by 85%-152% and token output per unit cost by 2.5x. SenseTime has adapted over 20 domestic chips, with six or seven achieving stable commercial profitability; domestic chip business gross margin turned positive, and daily token processing is expected to reach 2.42 trillion by end of July.

Efficiency Optimization Becomes New Frontier

Shishitech launched the domestic token optimization factory "Tuoyuan," compatible with over 10 domestic chips, achieving daily throughput of hundreds of billions of tokens through KV Cache compression, full-modal token compression, and long-context optimization. TsingMicro's reconfigurable computing architecture boosts transistor utilization to over 70%, and its 4K supernode reduces interconnect costs by about 90% compared to foreign solutions. ZTE introduced an 800V high-voltage DC power supply with 98% efficiency, combined with liquid cooling to achieve a PUE as low as 1.15.

Ecosystem Acceleration, Software Stack Key for Migration

Multiple vendors emphasized software ecosystem importance. TsingMicro's RAISA software stack supports nearly 1,000 operators and over 200 models; BAAI's FlagOS 2.0 supports 32 chips from 18 vendors. SenseTime, together with nearly 20 ecosystem partners, launched a domestic AI infrastructure ecosystem co-building initiative, planning to build five 10,000-card domestic computing clusters. Baidu Kunlun Chip secured the top share in all three bidding packages for China Mobile's AI general computing equipment procurement, with a total bid value reaching the billion-yuan level.

Market Outlook

Huatai Securities predicts 2026 as the first year of domestic supernode volume shipments, with the market space potentially reaching 341.4 billion yuan by 2028. As agent applications explode, computing demand grows 5-10x year-over-year, but supply growth is limited, creating a supply-demand imbalance window that offers development opportunities for domestic computing power vendors.