An International Supercomputing Industry Exposition kicked off on Friday in Jinan, capital of East China's Shandong province, with more than 1,000 people from home and abroad exchanging ideas on the development and application of supercomputing, AI and big data.

The three-day event will hold a main forum and eight parallel forums focusing on themes including artificial intelligence, big data, block chain, new materials and smart manufacturing.

An exposition was held to display China's supercomputing centers, as well as the latest achievements of information technology and supercomputing industry.

China's supercomputing industry has made rapid developments in the past 10 years, Wang Endong, an academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering and the principal scientist of Inspur Group, a domestic leading company in big data services, said.

The gap between the productive forces of computing between China and US is narrowing, Wang said.

Supercomputing has been widely applied in weather forecasts, new drug development, oil exploration, and smart city information safety in China.

Jinan's supercomputing industry has also seen burgeoning development. The revenue of the new generation of information technology industry focusing on artificial intelligence and big data exceeded 300 billion yuan ($42.85 billion) in 2018, becoming an important growth driver of the city's economy.

At a parallel forum on computing in medical sciences held during the event, deals were signed on six projects to be built in Jinan International Center for Medical Sciences.