Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said Tuesday that it has developed a processor to be used to power servers in its data centers.
The development is the company’s latest foray into the semiconductor space, mirroring the moves of other global cloud computing players, while aligning with the priorities of the Chinese government to promote the country’s chip sector.
Developed by Alibaba’s in-house semiconductor unit T-Head, the chip — the Yitian 710 — is based on architecture from UK-based Arm Ltd, and will not be available for commercial use outside of Alibaba.
According to the market research company Gartner, Alibaba is China’s largest cloud computing provider by market share and the third largest in the world.
Competitors in the industry have also brought their own server chips onto the market. Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Amazon.com Inc rely on their respective Kunpeng and Graviton chips to power their cloud computing infrastructure.
Alibaba also said it had developed a proprietary line of servers called Panjiu, adding that it will make the source code for its Xuantie series of IP cores based on the RISCV open source architecture available to the public.
The Chinese government has long urged the industry to invest in the domestic chip sector, which is lagging behind its global counterparts.
