
Photo: VCG
Another day, another AI chip from a Chinese internet giant.
This time it’s Alibaba, which formally unveiled the Hanguang 800, the company’s first self-developed artificial intelligence-powered chip, at a Tuesday industry event in the eastern city of Hangzhou.
The Hanguang 800 specializes in machine-learning tasks and will improve Alibaba’s cloud computing services, the company said in a statement. The chip is currently being used in the company’s internal business operations, including advertising, product search, automatic translation, personalized recommendations and customer services, Alibaba added.
The company reportedly has no immediate plans to sell the chip as a standalone commercial product.
“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,” Jeff Zhang, Alibaba Group CTO and President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said in a statement.
The chip was developed by T-Head, a semiconductor company supported by DAMO Academy, Alibaba’s research institute. In July, T-Head debuted another high-performance internet-of-things (IoT) processor, the XuanTie 910, which aims to service heavy-duty IoT applications including AI, self-driving automobiles, and edge servers.
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