9 Insights from the 2020 Global Computing Index

Let’s take a look at the IDC white paper on the 2020 Global Computing Index, the world’s first index report on computing. The report studies the relationship between computing power and economic development, and serves as a reference for the outlook of the global digital economy. Here are 9 insights from the report:

1) Computing Defines Productivity in the Digital Economy Era

When the computing index increases by 1% on average, the digital economy and GDP increase by 3.3% and 1.8% respectively.
For countries on the rise, a growth of 1% in the computing index will increase GDP by 1.5 times, and for leading countries, by 2.9 times.
The computing index system comprises of computing capacity, computing efficiency, infrastructure support and application level.
The Top 5 countries in the computing ranking are USA, China, Japan, Germany, and the UK.

2) AI Computing Market Share Is Growing Steadily

In 2015, AI computing accounted for 7% of the entire computing market. The number has since risen to 12% in 2020 and is expected to reach 23% in 2024.
China and the United States are the two biggest investors in AI, which makes up about 10% of the total spending on overall computing growth in both countries.
The total spending on AI in Japan over the next five years is expected to reach a CAGR of 35%. Meanwhile, Brazil’s spending on AI and AI servers reached 25.1% and 22.1% respectively in the past five years.

3) Synchronous Development of Emerging Applications and Computing Fosters Economic Growth

Investment in emerging technologies, especially IoT, AI and big data, is highly relevant to investment in computing.
Computing provides basic support for the application of emerging technologies, while the advancement of emerging technologies helps improve computing capabilities.

4) Investment in Computing Enables Innovation in the Internet Industry

Proportion of expenditure on computing in the Internet industry in different countries: 31% in leading countries, 20% in countries on the rise, and 11% in countries just starting to develop their technology infrastructure.
Internet enterprises are the main players that drive the application of emerging technologies and technological innovation.
In 2019, the Internet industry was responsible for 20% of the total expenditure on AI and applied AI in various scenarios.

5) Manufacturing is the Biggest Investor in Computing Among Traditional Industries

The manufacturing industry is making the largest investment in computing among traditional industries around the world.
New trades and new models heralded by the internet become new drivers of growth in the manufacturing industry.

6) Finance is the Biggest Investor in AI Computing Among Traditional Industries

The finance industry is making the third biggest investment in computing, and the biggest investment – at 24.9% total expenditure — in AI computing among traditional industries worldwide.
AI plays a key role in digital transformation of the finance industry, as it helps financial enterprises reduce cost, raise efficiency, and improve customer experience.

7) Application of Emerging Technologies Accelerates Development of Computing

AI is driven by computing, data and algorithms, and sufficient computing power is required to process increasingly massive data pools and complex algorithms.
The wide application of IoT boosts the rapid development of edge computing, which is reshaping IT infrastructure and will likely change the forms of computing, storage and network.

8) Open Computing is A Growing Trend

Internet enterprises and IT vendors are actively working together to advance open computing and develop open, integrated and intelligent data centers.
Open computing is seeing growing adoption in traditional industries. Industries such as telecommunication, finance, gaming and e-commerce have started to deploy IT infrastructure with open standards.

9) Computing Plays a Fundamental Role in Economic Development

Digital economy plays a key role in business recovery, growth and innovation in the new normal, for which computing provides fundamental support.
Explosive growth of new application scenarios needs support from extreme computing, and the changes in users’ consumption habits and use models accelerate the transformation of enterprises.