The Hanguang 800 is being implemented across many application scenarios within Aliyun, ranging from video classification to smart city applications. For example, the company's popular Pailitao platform applies visual image search to e-commerce, allowing customers to search for items by taking a photo of the query object. Using AI-based image recognition & indexing powered by the new Hanguang 800, Aliyun can increase image processing efficiency by 12 times compared to GPUs. With regard to smart city tech, Aliyun says it previously used 40 traditional GPUs to process videos of central Hangzhou with a latency of 300ms. Now the task requires only four Hanguang 800 with a lower latency of 150ms.

Alibaba is well aware of the growing demand for dedicated compute to power today's AI applications. Last year, the Hangzhou-based tech giant launched its semiconductor subsidiary Pingtouge ("Honey Badger" in Chinese) to develop embedded chip and neural network accelerators. At the time, Alibaba CTO Jeff Zhang pledged Pingtouge would produce the world's most advanced neural network chip by the middle of this year. Today, Alibaba kept its promise. At the Alibaba Cloud (Aliyun) Apsara Conference 2019, Pingtouge unveiled its first AI dedicated processor for cloud-based large-scale AI inferencing.

The era of traditional microprocessor powered computing that has shaped our lives in many different ways is coming to an end. Researchers at New York based multinational technology firm IBM, believe that quantum computers will be a mainstream presence in our lives in five years. According to American financial services provider, Morgan Stanley, the quantum computing market is slated to be worth US$10 billion in the next decade. Another report by Homeland Security Research states that between 2018 and 2024, quantum computing and related technologies will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.6 percent. Quantum computing utilises several quantum mechanical phenomena which augments the manner in which information is processed and stored as compared to classical computing.

Alibaba (BABA) is charting a way to push the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in diagnostics and healthcare to make medical treatment more accessible, timely, and affordable. Alibaba Cloud is actively working on AI-powered solutions to tackle heath care problems in China and globally. Here's a look at Alibaba's efforts to bring AI to the healthcare arena and why this exercise matters. The World Health Organization database reveals that the world's most populous nation, China, has a shortage of physicians with only 1.49 doctors available for every 1,000 people, lower than 2.55 in the U.S., 2.8 in the UK, and 3.37 in Australia. There is a further shortage of specialist doctors (such as radiologists and oncologists) despite the huge workload; such mismatches increase the chances of misdiagnosis and wrong treatment.

Forget artificial intelligence for board games. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. used artificial intelligence to predict the winner of a popular Chinese reality TV singing competition – and got the winner and finalists all correct. On Friday night, the cloud-computing arm of Alibaba, Aliyun -- or Alibaba Cloud -- used "Ai," its artificial intelligence program, during the four-hour finale of Hunan TV's "I Am a Singer." The program worked to choose winners as the audience of 500 people who served as judges independently deliberated. The Ai predictions were featured live during the finale.

In August 2015, Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba announced that its cloud computing business, Aliyun, would offer a machine learning service to help enterprise customers streamline analytics software development. The service is based on Aliyun's Open Data Processing Service (ODPS) technology, which is capable of processing 100 petabytes of data in six hours. The DT PAI platform offers a drag and drop interface to simplify the process for developers. "What used to take days can be completed in minutes," said Xiao Wei, senior product expert with Alibaba's cloud business, as the service was announced.