Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) has successfully developed its own chip, delving deeper into semiconductors just as Washington targets China’s technology industry.
The e-commerce giant joins a series of giant Chinese corporations such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) that are creating alternatives to foreign software and hardware.
Alibaba on Thursday unveiled the Xuantie 910 processor based on an open-source design known as RISC-V that competes with the global standard.
The new processor supports connected devices and some artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
Xuantie is the first fully formed product to emerge from a chip-making subsidiary Alibaba set up last year to power its foray into cutting-edge circuity.
Led by the unit T-head (平頭哥), it is part of the company’s expansion into AI and development of pivotal technology for the Internet of Things (IoT).
If Alibaba’s chip business succeeds, it could introduce a new revenue stream and drive its burgeoning cloud services division.
The US-China trade dispute “has also bolstered China’s determination to become more independent when it comes to technology,” Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Mark Li said. “Alibaba’s backing of RISC-V may threaten the businesses of existing chip intellectual property companies.”
However, Alibaba might be late to the game. Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc’s Google already have in-house chip design teams, as cloud computing and AI have specialized demands, making in-house manufacturing more practical, despite the expense.
Alibaba joins a coterie of Chinese corporations that are aiming to reduce the country’s overwhelming dependence on foreign chips — an imbalance brought into focus by curbs on the sale of US technology to Huawei.
China imports about three times as many chips as it produces, and spends more on semiconductors than it does on oil.
Chinese companies have never rivaled Taiwan, the US, and South Korea in manufacturing the most advanced chips, but it is capable of designing cutting-edge chips as demonstrated by Huawei unit HiSilicon Technologies Co (海思半導體).
Xuantie “is designed to serve a lot more heavy-duty IoT applications” from self-driving cars to networking and server computing, Alibaba said in a statement. “The new processor would also help drive the growth of the RISC-V open-source community in Asia and globally.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day