China’s artificial intelligence companies have announced two new industry alliances with the aim of developing a domestic ecosystem.
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China’s artificial intelligence companies have announced two new industryalliances,aiming to develop adomesticecosystemto reduce dependence on foreign tech as they seek to cope with U.S. export restrictions on advanced Nvidiachipsets.
The announcements were timed to coincide with the three-day World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghaiending on Monday.
The conference also showcased a slew of new products, such as anAIcomputing systemfrom Huaweithat experts believe rivals Nvidia’s most advanced offering, as well as consumer-friendly products such as several kinds of digitalAIglasses.
The “Model-ChipEcosystemInnovation Alliance” brings togetherChinesedevelopers of large language models (LLMs) andAIchip manufacturers.
“This is an innovativeecosystemthat connects the complete technology chain from chips to models to infrastructure,” said Zhao Lidong, CEO of Enflame, one of the participating chipmakers.
Other manufacturers of graphics processing units (GPUs) in the alliance include Huawei, Biren, and Moore Threads, which have been hit by U.S. sanctions that block them from purchasing advanced tech made with U.S. know-how. The alliance was announced by StepFun, an LLM developer.
A second alliance, the ShanghaiGeneral Chamber of CommerceAICommittee,aims to “promote the deep integration ofAItechnology and industrial transformation.”
Participants include SenseTime, also sanctioned by the U.S. and which has pivoted from facial recognition technology to LLMs. Others are StepFun and another LLM developer, MiniMax, as well as chipmakers Metax and Iluvatar CoreX.
One of the most talked about products at the conference was Huawei’s CloudMatrix 384 which incorporates 384 of its latest 910C chips and outperforms Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72 on some metrics, according to U.S. research firm SemiAnalysis.
Huawei’s system design capabilities have meant that it has been able touse more chips and system-level innovations to compensate for weaker individual chip performance, SemiAnalysis said.
At least six otherChinesecomputingfirmsshowcased similar “clustering” chip technology. Metax demonstrated anAIsupernode featuring 128 C550 chips designed to support large-scale liquid-cooled data centre requirements.
Other events included Tencent‘sunveiling of its open-source Hunyuan3D World Model 1.0, which the company said enablesusers to generate interactive 3D environments through text or image prompts.
Baiduannounced what it said was next-generation “digital human” technology that helps businesses to create virtual livestreamers. It features “cloning technology” that can replicate a human’s voice, tone, and body language from just 10 minutes of sample footage.
Alibabawas among those announcingAIglasses. Its QuarkAIGlasses are powered by its QwenAImodel and are due to be released in China by the end of 2025. They will allowusers to access the tech giant’s map service for easy navigating and touse Alipay by scanning QR codes with voice commands.
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