Alibaba Group Holding has introduced a computing pooling solution that it said led to an 82 per cent cut in the number of Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) needed to serve its artificial intelligence models. The system, called Aegaeon, was beta tested in Alibaba Cloud’s model marketplace for more than three months, where it reduced the number of Nvidia H20 GPUs required to serve dozens of models of up to 72 billion parameters from 1,192 to 213, according to a research paper presented this...

The seizure by US authorities of US$13.4 billion worth of bitcoin from an alleged Cambodian criminal has raised questions over the safety of the digital assets and prompted frantic speculation in the crypto community over how the feat was accomplished. Weak private keys and insider theft could have made it possible for US law-enforcement agencies to track down the bitcoin privately held by Chen Zhi, who is accused of running a massive “pig butchering” operation in Cambodia, according to experts....

Alibaba Group Holding is making tangible progress in applying artificial intelligence models into the search and recommendation engines of its e-commerce ecosystem, according to a senior executive, as the company kicked off its annual Singles’ Day promotion this week. At the campaign’s launch in Shanghai on Thursday, Alibaba vice-president Zhang Kaifu, who also serves as head of applications for the company’s e-commerce businesses, said the firm’s use of Qwen’s large language models (LLMs) had...

Chinese tech giant ByteDance has more than doubled the number of tokens processed by its flagship Doubao large language models (LLMs) in the past six months, highlighting a surge in artificial intelligence use among Chinese consumers and placing it among the top global hyperscalers. Doubao’s average daily token usage jumped from 12.7 trillion tokens in March to over 30 trillion tokens in September, ByteDance’s Volcano Engine cloud unit president, Tan Dai, said at a corporate event on...

China’s megacities are moving in tandem to draw capital to semiconductor research and development, as Beijing accelerates its chip self-sufficiency drive in the face of tightening US export controls. Major technology hubs including Shenzhen, Shanghai and Hangzhou – and even lesser-known players like Hubei province – have all launched major chip industry investment projects in the past few months, with regions competing to emerge as powerhouses in the strategically vital sector, according to...

Micron Technology plans to stop supplying server memory chips to data centres in China after the business failed to recover from a 2023 government ban on its products in critical Chinese infrastructure, according to two people briefed on the decision. Micron was the first US chipmaker to be targeted by Beijing – a move that was seen as retaliatory for a series of curbs by Washington aimed at impeding tech progress by China’s semiconductor industry. Since then, both Nvidia and Intel have...

Apple’s iPhone Air sold out within minutes of its launch in China on Friday, underscoring the device’s popularity among Chinese consumers despite competition from Android devices. The strong sales followed CEO Tim Cook’s visit this week to promote the product in the world’s largest smartphone market amid ongoing geopolitical tensions between China and the US. As chairman of an advisory body at Tsinghua University’s management school, Cook also met Vice-Premier He Lifeng on Thursday. Pre-sales...