Alibaba’s PPU Chip Outperforms NVIDIA A800 – How China’s AI Hardware Is Catching Up

On September 17, a comprehensive report citing CCTV and other news sources compared the key parameters of domestic AI accelerator cards with NVIDIA’s offerings. Alibaba’s subsidiary Pingtouge (平头哥) unveiled its latest artificial‑intelligence PPU chip, which surpasses NVIDIA’s A800 on all major metrics and is comparable to the H20.

Compared with other domestic AI chips, the Pingtouge PPU leads in most performance indicators.

Specific parameters include: the PPU is equipped with 96 GB HBM2e memory, exceeding the A800’s 80 GB HBM2e and matching the H20’s capacity (though the H20 uses the newer HBM3). Its inter‑chip bandwidth reaches 700 GB/s, higher than the A800’s 400 GB/s but slightly below the H20. The PPU supports PCIe 5.0×15, outperforming the A800’s PCIe 4.0×16 and equal to the H20. Power consumption stays at 400 W, matching the A800 and lower than the H20’s 550 W.

The report also noted that China Unicom’s Sanjiangyuan Green Power Intelligent Computing Center project has signed contracts with multiple domestic AI‑chip vendors. The signed equipment totals 1,747 units, comprising 22,832 compute cards and delivering a combined compute power of 3,479 P. Breakdown: Alibaba Cloud’s “Wan Card” – 1,024 units with 16,384 Pingtouge compute cards delivering 1,945 P; Chinese Academy of Sciences – 512 units with 4,096 MuMing cards delivering 984 P; Beijing Jingtai – 83 units with 1,328 BR100 cards delivering 450 P; Zhonghao Semiconductor – 128 units delivering 200 P.

In addition, the planned contracts for the project anticipate a total compute power of 2,002 P, involving cards from companies such as Tai​chu Yuanjie, SuiZhi Technology, and Moore Thread.