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Ann Cao

Alibaba Group Holding’s semiconductor design arm, T-Head, on Thursday unveiled details of its advanced artificial intelligence chip with capabilities said to be on par with Nvidia’s H20, days after the unit was reportedly being prepared for a potential spin-off and public listing.
According to information on T-Head’s website, the Zhenwu 810E was a “fully self-developed” parallel processing unit (PPU), an application-specific integrated circuit designed for both AI training and inference. Alibaba owns the SCMP.
Developed by T-Head to handle the massive data throughput required for generative AI systems, the Zhenwu 810E supports 96 gigabytes of High Bandwidth Memory 2 Enhanced – a 3D-stacked synchronous dynamic random-access memory standard designed for AI, machine learning and high-performance computing.
A single card with the T-Head PPU handles a bandwidth of 700 gigabytes per second, which made it on par with Nvidia’s H20 – a graphics processing unit (GPU) tailored by Nvidia specifically for China to comply with US export restrictions.
China last year summoned Nvidia over alleged “back door safety risks” in the H20, which signalled a de facto ban on its sales to local firms.
T-Head’s launch of the Zhenwu 810E marked the latest initiative by China’s Big Tech firms, including Huawei Technologies and Baidu, to develop a domestic alternative to Nvidia’s GPUs and bolster the country’s technology self-reliance efforts.
Before Washington and Beijing stepped up their regulatory scrutiny of the firm last year, Nvidia said it had 95 per cent of the advanced chip market in China.
Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed stock was unchanged at HK$173.30 on Thursday.

While details of the Zhenwu 810E were made public this week for the first time, the advanced processor had already been deployed in multiple 10,000-chip computing clusters of Alibaba Cloud – the AI and cloud services unit of Hangzhou-based Alibaba – as well as large external clients, according to T-Head.
The T-Head-designed chip was first unveiled in a report by state broadcaster China Central Television that aired on September 16, which simply identified it as PPU. It showed Premier Li Qiang being briefed by China Unicom on the use of mainland-developed chips in the telecommunications network operator’s infrastructure.
The report showed T-Head’s PPU being compared with Nvidia’s H20 and A800 GPUs in a performance benchmark at a data centre operated by China Unicom in northwestern Qinghai province.
Founded in 2018, T-Head said its self-developed Inter-Chip Network technology provided high bandwidth and low latency training and inference for large language models. The Zhenwu 810E was also suitable for autonomous driving applications, it added.
The Zhenwu 810E, however, still lagged behind the performance of the H200, which delivers roughly six times the performance of the H20. Nvidia’s second most powerful GPU was expected to start shipping to Chinese clients from this week.
An initial H200 shipment of more than 400,000 units was expected to be delivered to ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent Holdings, according to a Reuters report.


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T-Head, the semiconductor design arm of Alibaba, promotes its Zhenwu 810E chip as capable for both AI training and inference. Photo: Handout

A China Central Television report on September 16, 2025, shows T-Head’s parallel processing unit being compared with Nvidia’s H20 and A800 processors in a performance benchmark during Premier Li Qiang’s visit to China Unicom’s data centre in northwestern Qinghai province. Photo: CCTV

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T-Head is the semiconductor design unit of Alibaba Group Holding. Photo: T-Head

A China Central Television report on Tuesday shows Alibaba Group Holding’s PPU, an AI chip developed by the company’s T-Head semiconductor design unit, being compared to Nvidia’s H20 and A800 processors in a performance benchmark during Premier Li Qiang’s visit to China Unicom’s data centre in northwestern Qinghai province. Photo: CCTV

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The launch of the Zhenwu 810E marks the latest initiative by China’s Big Tech firms to develop a domestic alternative to Nvidia’s AI chips


The launch of the Zhenwu 810E marks the latest initiative by China’s Big Tech firms to develop a domestic alternative to Nvidia’s AI chips.


Alibaba’s T-Head unit unveils details of AI chip designed to rival Nvidia’s GPUs

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The launch of the Zhenwu 810E marks the latest initiative by China’s Big Tech firms to develop a domestic alternative to Nvidia’s AI chips

The launch of the Zhenwu 810E marks the latest initiative by China’s Big Tech firms to develop a domestic alternative to Nvidia’s AI chips