Alibaba Cloud, which achieved full-year profitability for the first time, is setting out again to move towards a new cycle of cloud computing.
At the 2022 Alibaba Cloud Technology Summit, Alibaba Cloud researchers released a new cloud infrastructure processor CIPU (Cloud infrastructure Processing Units). Alibaba Cloud said that the CIPU is a dedicated processor designed for new cloud data centers to accelerate and control computing resources and will replace the CPU as the processing center of IDC in the cloud era.
For many people, CIPU is a very unfamiliar and abstract technical term. Even for many technical personnel, it is an advanced and novel concept. However, the role and goals of Alibaba Cloud CIPU are far-reaching.
As you know, in the traditional cloud computing architecture, the CPU is the center. However, with the development of the cloud computing market, there are more and more data-intensive calculations. The cloud computing architecture based on the CPU center is naturally difficult to satisfy the massive data. calculation requirements. For CIPU to work, it also needs the support of Alibaba Cloud Feitian operating system. Therefore, when Alibaba Cloud released CIPU, it also proposed a new cloud computing architecture system, from the core part of the data center at the bottom to the native software at the top. , is a complete self-developed technology system.
Behind "CIPU + Feitian Operating System" is Alibaba Cloud's efforts and determination to define a new generation of cloud computing architecture. Alibaba Cloud is a pioneer in cloud computing in China and has been making a lot of efforts in technology research and development, security and independence. For example, Alibaba Cloud's "Feitian Cloud Operating System" has built a new computing architecture that integrates self-developed chips, servers, computing, storage, networks and other software and hardware; another example is Alibaba Cloud's "Feitian Cloud Operating System" which has become a trend in cloud computing. Go IOE" wave.
At the beginning of its birth in 2009, Alibaba Cloud put forward the slogan "Go to IOE", which was considered by many to be a foolish dream. Until July 19, 2013, the last Oracle database in Taobao's core system went offline, and "Go to IOE" It has finally become a consensus on cloud computing in China and has become a wave. The essence of "de-IOE" is not only for the consideration of computing efficiency, but also for the trade-off of data security. It is for China's cloud computing to get rid of the limitations of the cloud computing architecture defined by three American companies: IBM, Oracle, and EMC.
This time, the CIPU released by Alibaba Cloud is an effort by Chinese enterprises to define the next generation technology and achieve overtaking as cloud computing enters a critical breakthrough period.
In a sense, the launch of CIPU is also inevitable for Alibaba Cloud's self-research strategy. Starting from the Feitian Cloud operating system, Alibaba Cloud has continuously increased investment in research and development in areas such as chips and servers. In 2021, it released blockbuster products such as Shenlong, Yitian, and Panjiu.
Alibaba Cloud's product-level layout is dazzling, but in general, its expansion direction still focuses on the technology itself, and tackles basic technology step by step. This is why Alibaba Cloud proposed "Back to Basic" this year - returning to the essence of cloud computing. This is not so much a market-oriented presentation, but rather a summary of Alibaba Cloud's past and a framework for the future.
The starting point of Alibaba Cloud is the "Feitian Operating System". The expansion from operating system to chips is a path that technology companies including Apple and Microsoft have also taken. At the beginning of its birth, Alibaba Cloud proposed the "one cloud, multiple cores" strategy, adapting to multiple architectures such as X86, ARM, and Risc-V, and being compatible with various CPUs such as Feiteng, Kunpeng, AMD, and Ampere to form a standard The computing power output of the form. Later, Alibaba Cloud also launched its self-developed CPU chip Etian 710 in response to the large-scale and high-concurrency characteristics of cloud computing.
How to make multiple chips not only adaptable and compatible under the premise of "one cloud, multiple cores", but also collaborate efficiently in the cloud like one chip, is the problem Alibaba Cloud CIPU is trying to solve.
In the past ten years or so, global cloud computing technology has gone through two stages of development: the first stage is distributed and virtualization technology, which replaced mainframes and minicomputers to meet the elastic computing power needs brought about by enterprise business expansion; the second stage is In the first stage, the technicalization of resource pools appeared, through the separation of computing and storage, and then large-scale programming and scheduling, forming an ultra-large-scale computing and storage resource pool.
The evolution of cloud computing technology is all software-defined and optimized based on the traditional CPU-centered architecture. Obviously, with the further development of cloud computing technology, Alibaba Cloud's CPU optimization will inevitably be put on the agenda. This is due to the technical path.
Of course, Alibaba Cloud's launch of CIPU is also related to the current difficulties faced by cloud computing. The current and future of the Internet is the Industrial Internet, which is also known as the Internet of Everything. This has higher computing and storage requirements than the previous PC and mobile Internet. The traditional CPU-centered computing architecture faces the challenges of the mobile Internet. The data is skyrocketing, and we can barely cope with it. But when we have to adapt to the future, various problems will arise.
For example, the traditional CPU-centered architecture results in long computing and network transmission delays. For example, the increase in big data applications has led to an increase in the amount of data migration within the data center. The CPU-centered architecture cannot provide high bandwidth. According to Alibaba Cloud, Alibaba Cloud manages more than one million servers in 84 availability zones in 27 countries and regions around the world. The traditional CPU-centric architecture cannot solve ultra-large-scale complex management problems.
In order to solve these problems, Alibaba Cloud decided to innovate the cloud computing architecture and rewrite the original CPU-centered architecture into an architecture centered on Feitian operating system + CIPU.
Alibaba Cloud's technical staff explained that "Feitian + CIPU" is to integrate millions of servers into one supercomputer through overall management, overall orchestration, and overall scheduling. In this design, CIPU is more like a big data center and big cloud computing controller, supporting Feitian operating system to manage and accelerate cloud resources more efficiently.
After more than ten years of development, Alibaba Cloud has grown from scratch. While leading China's cloud computing, it has also become a global leader in cloud computing. Together with Amazon's AWS and Microsoft's Azure, Alibaba Cloud is known as the "Global Cloud Computing 3A". In terms of technical capabilities, Chinese cloud vendors represented by Alibaba Cloud are not inferior to other international giants. However, to overtake American technology companies, Chinese cloud vendors need not only the accumulation of basic technologies, but also the definition of technology to seize the future. Compete for the right to speak. Alibaba Cloud's release of CIPU this time is an effort to define technology and seize the right to speak in the future.
"Cloud computing has entered a critical breakthrough period. If we define the next generation technology well, China's cloud computing will have an opportunity to overtake." Zhang Jianfeng said this at the Alibaba Cloud CIPU press conference.
In addition to Alibaba Cloud, there will definitely be more Chinese technology companies coming forward to compete with international giants.