Why can the Kirin chip, which Huawei grinds for ten years, be made in one year when it reaches Ali? In fact, there is still a big difference between chips and chips. Huawei Kirin adopts arm architecture and belongs to a highly integrated SOC, which is composed of CPU, GPU, NPU and other parts, and even integrates baseband chips. It is a highly complex chip collection, which also involves many patented technologies, while Pingtou Gexuantie 91 belongs to NPU chip, mainly dealing with AI calculation, which is lower in terms of design and production complexity.
another point, Xuantie 91 didn't start from scratch. The Dharma Institute of Alibaba has been established for several years, and has been conducting research and development on chips. Alibaba acquired Zhongtianwei, then merged with Dharma Institute, and finally made Pingtou Brother. In recent years, Ali has also invested heavily in chip technology research and development, attracting high-end talents from all walks of life, so it is not surprising that an AI chip has been developed in a short time.
although the functions of Xuantie 91 are not as comprehensive as those of Huawei Kirin 98, we can't underestimate this chip. It supports 16 cores at most, and its single-core performance reaches 7.1 C/MHz, which is more than 4% higher than that of similar processors, and its main frequency reaches 2.5GHz. There is also a three-launch instruction architecture. Although it is an application-level chip mainly aimed at AI computing on the surface, it has full potential to compete with ARM chips. This is only the first model of Pingtou.
finally, it is very important that Huawei Kirin chip, no matter how powerful it is, is mainly self-sufficient and will not be sold to third parties in a short time, while the positioning of Xuantie 91 is open. If Ali revitalizes the whole ecological chain, it has great potential.