A person walks previous a brand of Alibaba Group at its workplace constructing in Beijing, China August 9, 2021. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang
SHANGHAI, Oct 19 (Reuters) – Chinese language tech big Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (9988.HK) mentioned on Tuesday it has developed a processor that will probably be used to energy servers in its knowledge facilities.
The event marks the most recent foray into semiconductors for the corporate, mirroring strikes from different world cloud computing gamers whereas additionally dovetailing with Chinese language authorities’s priorities to spice up the nation’s chip sector.
Developed by Alibaba’s in-house semiconductor unit T-Head, the chip — the Yitian 710 — is predicated on structure from UK-based Arm Ltd, and won’t be out there for industrial use outdoors of Alibaba.
Alibaba is the biggest cloud computing supplier in China by market share and the third-largest globally, in accordance with analysis agency Gartner.
Its rivals within the sector have additionally launched server chips of their very own. Huawei Applied sciences Co Ltd (HWT.UL) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) depend on their respective Kunpeng and Graviton chips to energy their cloud computing infrastructure.
Alibaba additionally mentioned it has a developed proprietary line of servers, referred to as Panjiu, and added that it’ll make the supply code for its Xuantie collection of IP cores — primarily based on the RISC-V open supply structure — out there to the general public. Alibaba unveiled the Xuantie in 2019.
China’s authorities has lengthy urged business to put money into the home chip sector, which stays behind that of world counterparts.
The nation stays reliant on abroad corporations for a lot of its superior semiconductors, a vulnerability introduced forth when U.S. sanctions in opposition to Huawei crippled that firm’s booming smartphone enterprise.
Along with Alibaba, search big Baidu Inc (9888.HK), telephone maker Xiaomi Corp (1810.HK), and numerous Chinese language automotive and equipment corporations have begun investing in chips.
Reporting by Josh Horwitz; Modifying by Himani Sarkar and Uttaresh.V
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