Alibaba unveils new chip design to meet surging demand for AI
The emerging architecture has become popular in China due to persistent geopolitical tensions
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[HONG KONG] Alibaba is launching a new chip for agentic artificial intelligence (AI) and inference computing, adding to a portfolio of semiconductors designed to drive its AI ambitions.
The Hangzhou-based company’s research arm, Damo Academy, on Tuesday (Mar 24) unveiled XuanTie C950, a central processor unit (CPU) based on the RISC-V architecture. The CPU is optimised for cloud computing, and it allows customers to tailor the chip for their specific inferencing use, Alibaba said.
Alibaba is one of China’s leading AI players, and its chip subsidiary T-Head aims to compete with Nvidia and Huawei Technologies in the country. The Chinese company’s proprietary AI accelerators have already entered mass production, chief executive officer Eddie Wu said last week during an earnings call.
Wu last year detailed his plan of having Alibaba becoming an all-stack AI technology provider, including hardware.
T-head has already made headway in securing major customers and Alibaba is preparing for a separate listing of the chip unit. The company launched its first AI smart glasses in November. It is also planning to introduce basic laptops and other devices for users to access the AI agent tool OpenClaw.
RISC-V is an alternative, open source chip design and competes with architectures by Arm Holdings and Intel.
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The emerging architecture has become popular in China due to persistent geopolitical tensions, with Alibaba being a longtime champion, particularly after Arm was slapped with restrictions in its business with Huawei following a US campaign to control the flow of technology to the Chinese tech firm. BLOOMBERG
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