ALIBABA has unveiled a new artificial intelligence (AI) inference chip called Hanguang 800.

Announced at the Alibaba Cloud’s Apsara computing conference Tuesday, the new chip is a neural processing unit which specializes in accelerating machine learning tasks.

Alibaba said the Hanguang 800 chip has outperformed industry average with performance and computational efficiency outpacing graphic processing units commonly used for machine learning.

While it previously took one hour to categorize, tailor search and personalize recommendations for the 1 billion images uploaded to Taobao daily, the new Hanguang 800 chip only takes five minutes to carry out the same tasks, said Alibaba.

Developed by T-Head, Alibaba’s DAMO academy, an Alibaba initiative to lead technology development and scientific research, the chip marks a second foray into the hardware space by China’s e-commerce leader.

The chip is already in use within Alibaba’s business operations, in product search and automatic translation on e-commerce sites, personalized recommendations, and intelligent customer service, among others.

“The launch of Hanguang 800 is an important step in our pursuit of next-generation technologies, boosting computing capabilities that will drive both our current and emerging businesses while improving energy efficiency,” said Jeff Zhang, Alibaba Group CTO and president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. (SD-Agencies)