Alibaba unveils first self-developed chip processor as China looks to bolster self-reliance in semiconductors
- China is still heavily reliant on the US for semiconductors, with 85 per cent of market demand met by imports
Alibaba Group on Thursday unveiled its first self-developed chip processor, as Chinese companies move to seek self-sufficiency in the semiconductor industry amid the US-China trade war.
Developed by Alibaba’s chip subsidiary Pingtouge, the Xuantie 910 processor is based on an open-source architecture called RISC-V, as opposed to the more commercially-used ARM architecture. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.
That Alibaba chose the RISC-V architecture for its new 16-core processor is also telling. RISC-V, being a globally-recognised open-source standard, is not affected by trade restrictions, allowing Chinese firms to use the architecture without having to commercially license from companies like ARM, which is subject to US technology bans like the one imposed on Huawei Technologies in May.
“This new RISC-V processor is designed to serve a lot more heavy-duty IoT applications that require high-performance computing, such as AI, networking, gateway, self-driving automobile and edge servers,” Alibaba said in a statement.
“We believe the new processor would also help drive the growth of the RISC-V open-source community in Asia and globally.”
The Xuantie 910 is currently the most high-performance RISC-V processor on the market and its increased processing power can help reduce the cost of chip production by more than 50 per cent, according to the company.