China Tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said on Tuesday that it has developed a processor which will be used to power servers in its data centers.
The development marks the latest foray into semiconductors for the company, mirroring moves from other global cloud computing players while also dovetailing with Chinese government's priorities to boost the nation's chip sector.
Developed by Alibaba's in-house semiconductor unit T-Head, the chip — the Yitian 710 — is based on architecture from UK-based Arm Ltd and will not be available for commercial use outside of Alibaba.
Alibaba is the third largest cloud computing service provider in China by market share and report developed by remittance firm Gartner.
Its rivals in the sector have also released server chips of their own. Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Amazon.com Inc rely on their respective Kunpeng and Graviton chips to power their cloud computing infrastructures.
Alibaba said it also had a developed open-source server line called Panjiu and added that it would make the source code for its Xuantie series of IP cores available to the public, based on the RISC-V architecture. China's government has long called industry to invest in a global chip sector, which remains behind domestic counterparts.
The country remains reliant on overseas companies for much of its advanced semiconductors, a vulnerability brought forth when U.S. sanctions against Huawei crippled the company's cellphone business.