At the Computing Conference held today in Alibaba, Alibaba officially announced the establishment of Ping Tou Ge Semiconductor Co., Ltd., the company is a chip company integrated by C-Sky and Alibaba's DAMO chip R&D team. In the early stage, C-Sky is an embedded CPU IP company that Alibaba acquired in April. Alibaba Group will give sufficient investment and support, and after several years of operation, it will become profitable and eventually grow into a self-financing enterprise.
C-Sky is the only company in mainland China that mass-produces its own embedded CPU IP Core chip, mainly for the Internet of Things applications, such as multimedia, security, home appliance, transportation, and smart cities. The chip R&D team formed by Alibaba DAMO Academy has started the independent research and development of AI chip earlier. The chip will be used in AI inference calculation such as image and video analysis and machine learning. Jeff Zhang, CTO of Alibaba, said: "Ping Tou Ge Semiconductor will release the first neural network chip in April next year."
According to Alibaba, the company's Chinese name “Ping Tou Ge Semiconductor Co., Ltd.” was decided by Jack Ma, “Ping Tou Ge” is the nickname of honey badger (Mellivora capensis) in China. Honey badger is an animal that inhabits tropical rainforests and open grasslands, it is the most fearless animals in the world. The reason for taking this name comes from Jack Ma's recent trip to Africa, the original intention is to hope that the company can learn the spirit of honey badger and be brave.
