Alibaba has unveiled its first chip designed for artificial intelligence applications, becoming the latest non-traditional chipmaker to develop its own hardware amid a push from the Chinese government for self-sufficiency in semiconductors.
The Chinese ecommerce group unveiled the Hanguang 800 on Wednesday, which is designed to carry out the type of calculations used by AI applications much faster than conventional chips.
Jeff Zhang, chief technology officer, said it would help the company provide clients with access to advanced computing via its cloud computing platform, and will be used to support the search algorithms on its ecommerce platforms.