China's First Domestically Made Smart Deep-Sea Cable-Laying Vessel Enters Service in Shanghai

By Global Times
July 16, 2026

China's first domestically designed and built deep-sea intelligent cable-laying vessel, Tianyi Linghangzhe, was commissioned in Shanghai on Wednesday and launched a full-system trial voyage for subsea cable-laying, a major step in strengthening the infrastructure underpinning the growth of computing power and artificial intelligence (AI), state broadcaster CCTV News reported on Thursday.

Boasting global submarine cable laying, maintenance and overhauling, the ship measures 116 meters in length, 24 meters in width and 12 meters in depth, with a full-load displacement of 18,000 tons. Its dedicated cable tank features a world-leading maximum load capacity of 8,000 tons for undersea communication optical cables.

Built with BeiDou and Global Positioning System (GPS) dual satellite-positioning signals, the vessel is fitted with a state-of-the-art intelligent positioning system. A suite of high-precision sensors tracking wind speed, geographic position and marine conditions enables it to detect subtle changes in ocean currents, wind and waves in real time, allowing steady and reliable operations even under Sea State 5 conditions.

Outfitted with a specialized 5.5-meter subsea cable burial system, the ship can execute cable burial operations at depths of up to 1,000 meters, setting a new national record for China's deep-sea submarine cable construction, according to the report.

Undersea communication cables feed high-speed subsea transmission that connects global computing hubs, acting as indispensable core infrastructure for AI computing systems.

These subsea cables deliver low-latency, eco-efficient computing support for AI applications. They also incorporate underwater data centers into China's national computing resource pool, enabling an innovative hybrid deployment model that combines land-based AI model training with subsea computational inference, the CCTV News report said.

China's marine engineering equipment and high-end shipbuilding sectors have seen accelerated industrial transformation and upgrading in recent years. The country has developed a large-scale, fully integrated marine engineering equipment industrial system with a coordinated whole-industry-chain development ecosystem.

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