Alibaba's AI chip division, T-Head, has secured China Unicom as a key client, signalling growing momentum for its semiconductor business in the domestic market. China Unicom's Sanjiangyuan data centre will deploy Alibaba's AI chips, along with chips from other mainland firms.
Alibaba's Pingtouge PPU AI chip exhibits key specifications comparable to Nvidia's H20, surpassing the A800 in certain metrics. The Pingtouge PPU features 96GB of HBM2e memory, matching the H20, and achieves an inter-chip interconnect bandwidth of up to 700GB/s. It also supports PCIe 5.0×15 and maintains a power consumption of 400W.
This development coincides with increased investment in AI by Chinese tech companies and a drive to utilise domestically produced AI chips. The deployment in China Unicom's data centre could serve as a crucial test for Alibaba's AI chip capabilities.
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