Tencent announces three proprietary chips for data centers

Tencent , a Chinese tech company that provides social media application 'WeChat' used mainly in China, announced on November 3, 2021 its own chips ' Zixiao ' ' Canghai ' ' Xuanling ' It was reported.

Tencent flags progress on three chips in development, investment effort | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/tencent-has-long-term-plan-chip-development-investment-2021-11-03/

Tencent launches three self-designed chips in expansion drive, helping boost China's semiconductor development efforts | South China Morning Post
https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3154744/tencent-launches-three-self-designed-chips-expansion-drive-helping

Tencent Developing Three SoCs Set to Replace Western Processors | Tom's Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tencent-unveils-three-new-chips

Tan Dao Shen, senior vice president of Tencent Cloud, Tencent's cloud division, said at Tencent's Digital Ecosystem Summit in Wuhan, China, 'Semiconductor chips are a key component of hardware and of the industrial Internet. It's a core infrastructure, 'he said, announcing that he is developing his own three chips.

The three chips announced are Zixiao, an AI accelerator focused on image processing and natural language processing, Canghai, a video transcoding unit, and Xuanling, a high-performance network interface controller for cloud data centers.

Of these, Zixiao has already entered the trial production stage, and 'performance is 100% better than competing products.' Tencent also emphasizes that Canghai 'performs 30% better than existing products' and Xuanling 'four times better than similar products released by other companies.' In addition, Tencent also announced the cloud OS 'Orca' at the same time.

'Tencent has made long-term plans and investments in chip research and development because of the strong business needs,' Tan said in a post on Tencent Cloud's official WeChat account. I am commenting.

In addition to developing and operating social media apps such as WeChat, Tencent's main business is game development and operation, and it is also the parent company of major game development companies such as Riot Games and Epic Games. However, in recent years, the Chinese government has tightened restrictions on games, and it is highly likely that the game sector will not be able to increase profits any further.

Meanwhile, Tencent has also entered the cloud computing business and is expected to focus more than ever. Tencent has installed hardware from US-based companies such as AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA in its data centers, but Alibaba, which competes with Tencent in the Chinese cloud computing market, is already in its own data center. We have introduced the general-purpose SoC 'Yitian710' that we have developed, and we are showing the attitude of American companies to reduce their dependence on hardware. In addition, the Chinese government is actively promoting the independent development of semiconductors, and Tencent's announcement of its own developed chip also indicates a departure from American corporate products while responding to the request from the government. There is also a direction to look at.

Alibaba announces 'China's most advanced' server chip 'Yitian 710' to optimize cloud computing --GIGAZINE