Alibaba Cloud Unveils Design Platform for AI Chips

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of the Alibaba Group, introduced a platform for developers create chips AI-enabled edge processors leveraging the RISC-V instruction set architecture.

Developed by Alibaba’s chip development company T-Head, the Wujian 600 platform supports edge-AI computing, a form of machine learning in which AI applications are used in physical devices.

The platform enables companies to design edge AI Systems-On-Chips (SoCs) — chips that combine multiple computing systems into a single package — that comply with the RISC-V open instruction set architecture.

The platform will lower development costs and shorten the chip design cycle to facilitate mass production of these high-performance SoCs.

“Customers can take advantage of the platform to develop their high-performance SoCs quickly and efficiently,” said Meng Jianyi, Vice President of T-Head, in a statement.

The platform will support the development and prototyping of Alibaba Cloud’s TH1520 high-performance SoC, which has already been used within the Alibaba ecosystem.

The global market for edge AI chips is set to grow much faster than the overall chip market and exceed $1.5 billion in sales by 2024, according to a report from consultancy Deloitte.

The new platform enables SoCs to be designed into embedded applications such as home robots, medical imaging, and video conferencing.

It also supports desktop-level applications, such as LibreOffice, built on top of OpenAnolis, a Linux-based open source operating system from the Alibaba community.

More than 200 chip and cloud companies have joined OpenAnolis in the last two years.

community building

Earlier this year, Alibaba Cloud made progress in porting the Android operating system to the RISC-V architecture, bringing it one step closer to equipping RISC-V-based Android devices with multimedia, signal processing, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and artificial intelligence.

This leads the company to use RISC-V chips to support functions that require a lot of computing power, after having successfully ported basic tasks such as Internet browsing.

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“By making the platform available to developers around the world, we hope to contribute to the RISC-V community, allowing for more customized RISC-V-based SoCs tailored to different applications,” says Meng.

Alibaba Cloud has made its RISC-V-based Xuantie-series processors available to developers around the world to promote innovation in the RISC-V software community.

The developer ecosystem supporting Xuantie on Linux and Android further strengthens the RISC-V software ecosystem, said Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, in a statement.