Alibaba Unveils First Self-Developed AI Chip In Move To Reduce Reliance On US Tech

In a move to reduce its reliance on U.S. technology, Alibaba has unveiled its first self-developed artificial intelligence chip for data centers, according to Nikkei. 

The move also shows that Alibaba, formerly just a software and e-commerce company, is now following in the footsteps of companies like Google and Amazon to become a “serious player” in hardware. 

Jeff Zhang, Alibaba chief technology officer said at the company’s cloud computing conference last week: “This is just the first step of a 10,000-mile journey. Alibaba is confident that we are not only capable of doing what a traditional hardware company could do but also capable of accomplishing what they could not do.”

The chip is called the Hanguang 800 and has power equivalent to 10 GPUs. Zhang said the breakthrough is already making a difference in Alibaba’s e-commerce business.

For example, it used to take an hour for Alibaba’s online marketplace to process a billion product images for its website. That job can now be done in just 5 minutes using the company’s new chip. 

“The launch of Hanguang 800 is an important step in our pursuit of next-generation technologies, boosting computing capabilities that will drive both our current and emerging businesses while improving energy-efficiency,” Zhang continued.

The company didn’t say whether or not it would replace the GPUs it uses with its own AI chip on a large scale, but Jack Ma – who has been the beneficiary of “reliance” on the U.S. capital markets to the tune of billions of dollars – has said he desires to reduce his company’s reliance on U.S. chips. 

Most processors now used by the company for AI workloads are made by U.S. chipmakers like Nvidia, AMD and Intel. 

Sean Yang, an analyst at Shanghai-based CINNO said: “It’s not too surprising that Alibaba would develop its own AI chip as it deploys data centers on a massive scale across China and in some emerging markets. AI computing is quite fragmented and every tech giant has different needs.”

The pursuit of custom AI chips has been widespread among technology heavyweights lately. In 2016, Google announced its own chip that would compete with Nvidia for training AI models. Facebook also recently announced ambitions to create an AI chip. Last year, Amazon unveiled its own chips as an alternative to traditional computing processors for AI projects. 

“The new announcement on AI chips can be viewed not only as an effort to decouple from U.S. chipmakers, but from a business point of view, it’s also a way for Alibaba to build more customized and competitive data center cloud service to compete with rivals like Amazon, Google, Tencent and Microsoft,” Yang continued. 

Alibaba remains the leader in China’s public cloud market, but Tencent is catching up. According to IDC data, Tencent achieved a market share of 11.5% last year – far behind the 43% share of Alibaba Cloud, but a marked improvement from 7.4% in 2016.

Globally, Alibaba ranks third in cloud computing, behind Amazon and Google.