Alibaba is developing its own neural network chip, the Ali-NPU, which will be used in AI applications, such as image video analysis, machine learning, and other scenarios, Yicai is reporting. After the chip is mature, it will provide services for businesses through Ali Cloud.
But this isnโt the only newsโAlibaba claims that the chipโs performance to price ratio will be 40 times that of current products on the market. According to the company, the Ali-NPU chip will have a special architecture with 10 times better performance than mainstream AI chips based on CPU or GPU architecture, while the manufacturing cost and power consumption are only half of that. Some commentators have questioned if this is a valid comparison since CPU and GPU chips have different architectures than NPUs.
The chip is being developed by Alibabaโs R&D institute, the DAMO Academy which stands for โDiscovery, Adventure, Momentum, and Outlook.โ The Academy was founded in October 2017 as part of Alibabaโs wider push into cutting-edge tech and it plans to attract talent by opening centers in seven cities around the world.
Last month during Alibabaโs inaugural tech summit called โNew Technology, New Futureโ, the e-commerce company announced that it would be investing in technological infrastructure including machine learning, chips, the Internet of Things, operating systems, and biometric identification. The event was held at Hangzhou headquarters on March 9 and was attended by around 5,000 engineers.
โAn economy that serves two billion people must be backed by solid technological capacity. To shoulder the future responsibility, we will build Alibabaโs own โNASA,โโ Alibabaโs executive chairman Jack Ma said during the event.
AI chips are one of the main targets of Chinaโs push for AI development. Currently, there are dozens of people working on chip development at the DAMO Academy in Shanghai and the US while that number is set to reach 100, Yicai reports. Alibaba has invested in several chip companies, including China-based Cambricon (ๅฏๆญฆ็บช), Kneron (่่ฝ), ASR (็ฟฑๆท็งๆ), C-Sky (ไธญๅคฉๅพฎ), and DeePhi (ๆทฑ้ด), as well as California-based Barefoot Networks.
Among Alibabaโs new technology focuses are also self-driving vehicles and quantum computing where it aims to compete with local rival Baidu.
