In 1978, Intel ushered in decades of glory in the X86 and Wintel era with an 8086 processor.

44 years later, on June 13, at the annual Alibaba Cloud Summit, a CIPU (Cloud Infrastructure Processing Units) carrying the heavy responsibility of “defining the next generation of technology” was born, ushering in an era in which China’s cloud computing leads the world.

Zhang Jianfeng, president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said at the meeting, "Cloud computing has entered a critical breakthrough period. If we define the next generation of technology well, Chinese cloud computing will have the opportunity to overtake." The key breakthrough Zhang Jianfeng mentioned is CIPU, a dedicated processor for cloud data centers.

So far, Alibaba Cloud has achieved full independent research and development of core technologies from end to end in the field of cloud computing. This also coincides with the theme of this year's Alibaba Cloud Summit, Back to Basic - persisting in the long march of technology and returning to the essence of technology.

As Zheng Weimin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, commented: "Cloud computing has entered a critical transition period. In the past few years, in the field of cloud computing, my country has mainly innovated at the software level and developed some open source ecosystems, but it is still catching up under the traditional IT landscape. Alibaba Cloud CIPU technology breaks the core of the previous generation of computing architecture, achieves world leadership in basic technology, and stands on the same starting line as international giants."

Standing shoulder to shoulder with international giants is like standing on the podium of the Olympics, with the championship just a hair’s breadth away. It can be said that Academician Zheng’s evaluation of CIPU is not only a high affirmation of Alibaba Cloud’s self-developed work, but also a high expectation for China’s cloud computing industry to lead the world.

So, what is CIPU and why can it reshape the global cloud computing landscape?

In short, the newly launched CIPU processor by Alibaba Cloud is specially designed for new cloud data centers. Its function is to accelerate and control computing resources. The relationship between it and the CPU is like that between the brain and the central nervous system. The former is still good at single calculations, while the latter is to solve the new problems faced by cloud computing under the new situation.

When talking about the reason for launching CIPU, Zhang Jianfeng made a metaphor: just like after the invention of the internal combustion engine, human imagination of vehicle speed has moved from the horse-drawn carriage era to the automobile era. The CIPU launched by Alibaba Cloud is like an internal combustion engine, pushing cloud computing technology from the horse-drawn carriage era to the automobile era.

Zhang Jianfeng said that in the past decade, the development of cloud technology has gone through two major stages. The first is the distributed technology stage, in which Internet companies gradually migrated from mainframes to distributed systems; the second is the stage represented by the emergence of resource pooling technology, which improved the reliability and availability of cloud computing through a computing and storage separation architecture.

It should be pointed out that both of the above stages rely on CPU-centric computing architectures. However, with the increasing number of data-intensive computing, traditional computing architectures are increasingly unable to adapt to development trends. Under this new situation, cloud technology development faces the problems of a sharp increase in computing and network transmission latency under traditional computing architectures, an increase in internal data migration, and how to manage millions of ultra-large-scale servers.

To use an analogy, CPU is like a car, the speed is getting faster and faster, but the road is still so wide, coupled with backward traffic management measures, even if your car is as fast as a Ferrari, it can only move at a snail's pace. The emergence of CIPU can widen the road before the advent of quantum computing, in the era of silicon-based computing, and then implement the most scientific management method to allow every car to play at the fastest speed.

As an important cloud infrastructure, CIPU will coexist in coordination with traditional computing units and accelerated computing units that meet specific acceleration workloads to form a new and complete distributed heterogeneous computing power module, providing ideas for solving the above problems.

In terms of advantages, CIPU not only has the advantage of virtualizing network equipment hardware, but also can accelerate hardware such as high-bandwidth physical networks and block storage access in storage-computing separation architectures, realize the popularization of RDMA technology, and achieve hardware-level security reinforcement isolation.

Zhang Jianfeng said that CIPU will connect to physical computing, storage, and network resources to quickly cloudify and perform hardware acceleration; it will connect to the FeiTian cloud operating system to manage millions of Alibaba Cloud servers around the world, reducing the loss of computing power virtualization to 0. From this perspective, CIPU can reconstruct the global cloud computing landscape because of its powerful and irreplaceable role.

China’s voice in cloud computing

With the ability to fly upwards and accelerate downwards, can Alibaba Cloud, supported by CIPU, really define the world's next-generation cloud computing architecture?

From a technical perspective, the cloud computing architecture system supported by "Feitian + CIPU" undoubtedly has such incredible strength. On the one hand, CIPU is both a subversive concept innovation and a positive exploration based on real problems. From the data disclosed by Alibaba Cloud, the role played by CIPU is also extremely significant.

In fact, the new generation of cloud computing architecture based on CIPU and Fei Tian operating system has demonstrated superior performance in both distributed applications and artificial intelligence scenario tests. In terms of storage, the new generation of architecture system reduces storage latency through full hardware virtualization and forwarding acceleration, while also providing more secure, reliable and higher-performance storage than local storage. In terms of network, after the application is on the cloud, the cluster throughput of the new generation of architecture system is increased by 30% compared with self-built physical machines, and the latency during business peak hours is reduced by 90%. In terms of computing, the new generation of architecture system increases the startup speed of virtualized containers and the training performance of AI deep learning scenarios by 350% and 30% respectively. From a performance perspective, the cloud computing architecture system supported by "Feitian + CIPU" has incomparable advantages over the existing CPU-centric computing architecture.

On the issue of technological independence, the cloud computing architecture system supported by "Feitian + CIPU" is entirely the result of Alibaba's self-development, which means that Alibaba Cloud has a world-class voice in this field. Zhang Jianfeng said during the roundtable dialogue at the summit that it is precisely because of self-development that Alibaba Cloud has a super-large-scale data center managed by Fei Tian, ​​can continuously make some technological innovations, and can launch the entire computer architecture based on CIPU as the core.

Industry analysts pointed out that the launch of Alibaba Cloud CIPU, a new generation of cloud computing architecture, not only demonstrated its strong technical strength to the outside world, but also won a voice for Alibaba Cloud and even the Chinese cloud computing industry in the world. After all, in the absolutely high-end technology field, only with solid technical strength can we avoid being stuck to the greatest extent.

CIPU establishes a new cloud computing ecosystem from cloud to end

While launching the cloud computing architecture system supported by "Feitian + CIPU", Alibaba Cloud also upgraded the Shadowless computer. Zhang Jianfeng said that the new generation of cloud computing system will not only affect the cloud and data center, but will also change the form of traditional computer terminals and software application distribution. So, what kind of sparks will the cloud computing architecture system supported by "Feitian + CIPU" create with Shadowless?

In a sense, the newly upgraded Wuying is undoubtedly the best showcase of the cloud computing architecture system supported by "Feitian + CIPU". After upgrading the new ASP cloud streaming protocol, Wuying will support developers to create 8K quality experience and control the latency within 20 milliseconds. Such a change also means that the new "ASP cloud streaming protocol" will promote Alibaba Cloud from proprietary cloud to public cloud scenarios, and from supporting office terminals to more diversified professional and innovative terminals.

On one hand, there is a brand-new cloud computing architecture system that has been upgraded and greatly improved in performance, and on the other hand, Wuying is beginning to move towards diversified professional innovative terminals. Alibaba Cloud seems to have the possibility of building a new ecosystem based on both. brand new The integration of cloud computing architecture systems will also become a new highlight.

For the global IT industry, Alibaba Cloud is like the barbarian standing at the door. Its disruptive innovation has become a market force that cannot be ignored. It has not only raised the ceiling of the development of the entire industry, but also set a clear direction for the entire industry like a signpost. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Intel used 8086 to open a decades-long bit era. Alibaba Cloud's CIPU is also likely to open a glorious era of its own in the field of cloud computing.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.