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| Source: Alibaba. Zhang talks about DAMO Academy's first year. |
Alibaba DAMO Academy, a global initiative by Alibaba to lead technology and science research, unveiled plans to develop disruptive technologies over the next five years. The technologies are developed to support the firm’s cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) businesses, as well as to explore new commercial applications in various industries - from logistics, materials to pharmaceuticals - that require greater computing power to achieve technology breakthroughs.
“Alibaba has been a leading technology innovator in cloud computing and artificial intelligence since we announced our determination to transform into a technology powerhouse two years ago,” said Jeff Zhang, CTO, Alibaba Group.
“The establishment of Alibaba DAMO Academy and its achievements over the past year underlies our strong commitment to technology leadership. Moving ahead, we are confident that our advantages in algorithm, data intelligence, computing power and domain knowledge on the back of Alibaba’s diverse ecosystem will put us at a unique position to lead real technology breakthroughs in disruptive areas, such as quantum and chip technology.”
Quantum computing
In quantum computing, the academy has embarked on developing its own quantum processors. Quantum computing represents an exponential increase in computing power as the basic unit of computing, the qubit, can theoretically store much more information than the bit, which is the basic unit of computing in use today.
The Hangzhou, China-based quantum hardware team is developing high-precision, multiple-qubit superconducting quantum processors. In the meantime, the academy will continue its efforts in driving quantum development. This includes building cloud-accessed, quantum-classical heterogenous systems for delivering quantum computing power as a utility, and searching for super-fast quantum-classical hybrid algorithms to solve fundamental problems in machine learning, optimisation, and physics simulations. The expansion to hardware reflects the academy’s conviction that the co-development of hardware and application will expedite the realisation of quantum computing’s revolutionary potential.
In addition, the academy will nurture and expand its network of partnerships to explore quantum-enhanced solutions for industries such as e-commerce, logistics, finance, materials and pharmaceuticals.
Chip technology
The academy plans to launch its first self-developed AI inference chip — the AliNPU — in 2H19. This chip could potentially be used for autonomous driving, smart cities and smart logistics applications. The Academy will also boost research and development in AI chips for training on the cloud and for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The goal is to build robust, cloud-based IoT infrastructure, providing computational power for the company’s data centres, as well as advancing IoT businesses ranging from smart homes to smart logistics.
During the conference, Alibaba also announced the establishment of a chip company, a subsidiary under Alibaba Group that will focus on customised AI chips and embedded processors to further support Alibaba’s growing cloud and IoT businesses as well as to provide intelligent solutions for different industries.
“Alibaba has been a leading technology innovator in cloud computing and artificial intelligence since we announced our determination to transform into a technology powerhouse two years ago,” said Zhang. “The establishment of Alibaba DAMO Academy and its achievements over the past year underlies our strong commitment to technology leadership. Moving ahead, we are confident that our advantages in algorithm, data intelligence, computing power and domain knowledge on the back of Alibaba’s diverse ecosystem will put us at a unique position to lead real technology breakthroughs in disruptive areas, such as quantum and chip technology.”
Alibaba DAMO Academy has over 300 researchers worldwide focusing on five major areas including machine intelligence, robotics, fintech, data computing and quantum computing. Global partners of the academy include the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University in the US; Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and in China, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University and The Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In the past year, the Academy released Taizhang, a quantum-circuit simulator leveraging Alibaba’s powerful classical computing infrastructure, which has successfully simulated a significantly more complicated family of quantum circuits than previously achieved. The milestone was an important step in the field and has raised new discussions around defining the boundaries of where a quantum-computing device may be considered exceeding the capacity of all classical computers. An extended version of Taizhang will soon be released as a tool for both hardware and application development.
The Academy further programmed an ultra-low latency and high performance deep learning processor (DLP) on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) in an effort to balance the low latency and high performance requirements for tasks such as image recognition and analysis.
Alibaba additionally announced the Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition, a global math competition to discover and nurture next-generation math geniuses and raise awareness about the importance of the subject. Mathematicians, including Yurii Nesterov, Professor at Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium; Frank Kelly, Professor at the University of Cambridge in the UK; Gang Tian, Distinguished Professor at Peking University in China; Jianshu Li, Chair Professor at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; and Yitang Zhang, Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the US will mentor select students from the competition.
In addition, the Academy offered nine young science researchers with 2018 DAMO Academy Young Fellow award during the conference.
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