(Yicai Global) May 19 -- The world's biggest chipmaker Intel Corp. [NASDAQ:INTC] hopes to work with China in eight areas including artificial intelligence (AI), unmanned driving, 5G, virtual reality (VR), the "Made in China 2025" strategy, precision medicine, and sports and robotics, said Yang Xu, Intel's global vice president and president of its China operations yesterday.

Speaking at the Yicai Technology and Innovation Forum, Yang said Intel is working with a number of Chinese companies in chipmaking, 5G and AI, adding that his company is working with Spreadtrum Communications, Inc. [NASDAQ:SPRD], a chipmaker owned by Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd., in wireless communication and mobile phone chips. Intel also cooperates with Tsinghua University in digital chip research, and with China Mobile Ltd. [HKG:0941] and some other telecoms carriers and telecoms equipment makers on 5G, he revealed.

Intel's model is to build industrial chains and ecosystems and promote joint innovation and development, Yang noted. In the era of smart connectivity, the US multinational corporation and technology company also seeks to produce more valuable data by making intelligent equipment to help boost the development and transformation of the real economy, Yang said at the Yicai forum.

China boasts over 1 billion mobile Internet users, 290 million motor vehicles and 19.4 billion passenger trips by air, road and rail annually, he said. "All this will contribute a torrent of data," Yang pointed out, saying, "Some domestic industries produce a staggering amount of information every day. For example, ride-hailing platforms generate 70 terabytes of data daily, while telecoms companies process 200 terabytes every day."

"Intel adopts an end-to-end strategy in the data sector. We collect, capture and calculate data at the front end and then do data transmission, analysis and mining to generate added value," he added.

Making an analogy, he said, "Alhough China is not a major oil-producing country, if we liken data to future oil, China must be the number one nation in terms of data." Yang estimates China's total data volume to reach 8,000 exabytes by 2020.