Sihai network

Alibaba announced a wholly-owned acquisition of Zhongtian micro to develop its own AI chip

Original title: Alibaba announced a wholly-owned acquisition of Zhongtian micro to build its own chip

Sihai comprehensive news Alibaba group announced today that it has wholly acquired the Chinese mainland's only independent embedded CPU IP Core Zhongtian micro system Limited (hereinafter referred to as "Zhongtian micro"), and the purchase amount has not been disclosed.

Dharma Institute announced the development of neural network chip, focusing on high cost performance

And yesterday, Alibaba Damo Institute disclosed that it is developing a neural network chip Ali NPU, which will be used in image and video analysis, machine learning and other AI reasoning calculation. According to Dharma Institute, the AI chip independently developed by Alibaba is mainly used to solve the problem of AI reasoning operation in business scenes such as image, video recognition and cloud computing, so as to improve the operation efficiency and reduce the cost.

According to Jiao min, a researcher of Damo Institute, Ali NPU, which is independently developed by Alibaba, based on the advantages of a large number of algorithm models accumulated by teams such as Ali machine intelligence technology laboratory in the AI field, designs the micro structure and instruction set according to the AI algorithm model, so as to realize the largest number of AI model algorithm operations at the minimum cost.

According to the design, Alibaba's Ali NPU performance will be 10 times that of mainstream CPU and GPU architecture AI chips on the market, while the manufacturing cost and power consumption will only be half, and the cost performance ratio will exceed 40 times. In the future, the ability of Ali NPU can not only better meet the needs of video and image processing, but also output the computing power through alicloud, enabling all walks of life.

Acquisition + investment: Ali has a long history of self-developed AI chips

In fact, Alibaba has made a long-term plan for the talent construction of self-developed AI chips.

'self developed AI chip 'has become a strategic component of Alibaba's layout of' China Chip '. At present, the chip R & D team of Damo Institute has reached dozens in the United States and Shanghai, and is expected to reach 100 by the end of the year.

In addition to the just announced acquisition of Zhongtian micro, Ali has invested in Cambrian, barefoot networks, Shenjian, kneron, ASR and other chip companies.

'the acquisition of Zhongtian micro is an important part of Alibaba's chip layout. Zhang Jianfeng, CTO of Alibaba, said that the IP core is the core of basic chip capability, and entering the IP core field is the basis for China's chips to achieve 'self-control'.

Statistics show that Zhongtian micro is the only large-scale CPU IP Core company in Chinese mainland, which focuses on 32 bit embedded CPU IP research and development and large-scale application. It faces IoT fields such as multimedia, security, family, transportation, smart city and so on. The global total shipment exceeds 700 million chips.

Yan Xiaolang, founder of Zhongtian micro, said, "Zhongtian micro team is committed to promoting the independent R & D and innovation capability of domestic CPU. After joining Alibaba, we hope to promote the large-scale commercial use of domestic independent chips through Alibaba's powerful technology platform and ecosystem integration capability, and make contributions to accelerating the application of & lsquo; China Chip & quot; in various fields. '

Under the catalysis of Sino US trade war, China's core industry is advancing vigorously

In recent years, although China's chip self-sufficiency rate has been increasing, there is still a big gap in many areas of domestic chips. Data show that in 2016, China imported $230 billion worth of chips, almost twice as much as crude oil, which ranked second. The problem of "lack of core and soul" has once again been placed in front of people.

In the face of sanctions from the US Department of Commerce, ZTE is in trouble, which has dealt a heavy blow to China's chip industry, which is still on the road. However, we can see that there are many chip related enterprises in China working silently, and they have been on the road of daring to catch up.

In response, the people's Daily said in an article, "the core technology of the Internet is our biggest & lsquo; life gate & amp; our biggest hidden danger is that the core technology is controlled by others.". Therefore, the core technology is the most important tool of our country, and independent innovation is the best way to get rid of being controlled by others.

With Ali's acquisition of chip enterprises, it is believed that China's chip manufacturing will speed up further. Let's see what Chinese chip enterprises are?

The main business of the above enterprises is integrated circuit design, which is one of the top ten integrated circuit design enterprises in China in 2017. In 2017, the sales volume of China's IC design industry exceeded 200 billion yuan (207.35 billion yuan in fact) for the first time. Although the top ten IC design enterprises are old faces, the entry threshold has been raised to 2 billion yuan.

In 2017, the sales volume of China's IC manufacturing industry reached 144.81 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of 28.5%. This is the fastest growth year of the chip manufacturing industry in the past decade.