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3w ago

China Touts Alibaba AI Chip as H20 Rival in State TV Demo, as 16,384 Cards Deploy at Unicom Site

State TV presented the chip as comparable to Nvidia's H20, with methodology undisclosed and software readiness uncertain.

A China Central Television report on Tuesday shows Alibaba Group Holding’s PPU, an AI chip developed by the company’s T-Head semiconductor design unit, being compared to Nvidia’s H20 and A800 processors in a performance benchmark during Premier Li Qiang’s visit to China Unicom’s data centre in northwestern Qinghai province. Photo: CCTV
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Overview

  • CCTV aired the comparison during Premier Li Qiang’s visit to China Unicom’s Qinghai facility, showing Alibaba’s Pingtouge PPU stacked against Nvidia’s H20 and A800 in a benchmark chart.
  • The on-screen specifications listed 96 GB of HBM2e, about 700 GB/s chip-to-chip bandwidth, PCIe 5.0 ×15 support and 400 W power, while Nvidia’s H20 uses 96 GB of HBM3.
  • China Unicom disclosed that 16,384 Alibaba cards are running across 1,024 devices, part of a broader deployment approaching 23,000 domestic accelerators at the site.
  • The centre reports multi-thousand-petaflop capacity today and expects to exceed 20,000 petaflops after subsequent build-out phases.
  • Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares rose about 5.3% following the broadcast, as independent benchmarks and details on frameworks and toolchains were not provided.