Alibaba’s AI chip goes head-to-head with Nvidia H20 in state-backed benchmark demo

Alibaba’s semiconductor unit, T-Head, has reportedly

that it claims matches the performance of Nvidia’s H20 — the GPU built specifically for the Chinese market that’s currently

.

The demonstration aired Tuesday, September 16, on China Central Television (CCTV), during a broadcast covering Premier Li Qiang’s visit to China Umicom’s Sanjiangyuan Energy Intelligent Computing Centre in Qinghai. In the segment, T-Head’s new “PPU” accelerator was directly compared with Nvidia’s H20 and A800, as well as Huawei’s Ascend 910B, with a chart implying performance parity between the Alibaba and Nvidia parts.

The chip, an ASIC designed for AI workloads, features 96 GB of HBM2e, 700 GB/s chip-to-chip interconnect, PCIe support, and 400 W board power, according to the on-screen specs as reported by

. While the broadcast didn’t disclose the specifics of the testing methodology used or publish raw figures, it’s the first public benchmark placing Alibaba’s hardware in the same class as Nvidia’s datacenter GPUs.

According to Reuters, China Unicom has already deployed 16,384 of Alibaba’s PPU cards across its infrastructure, accounting for more than half of the almost 23,000 domestic accelerators currently installed at the Qinghai facility. Together, the cards deliver 3,579 petaflops of compute, with the site expected to scale to more than 20,000 petaflops once all phases are complete.

There’s just as much geopolitical context behind the CCTV demonstration as there is technical.

was introduced to comply with U.S. export controls limiting the sale of high-performance silicon to China. Built on Hopper architecture but cut down to meet restrictions, the H20 ships with 96 GB of HBM3 and roughly 4.0 TB/s of memory bandwidth. That lends some perspective to Alibaba’s matching 96 GB HBM2e capacity, though not necessarily its real-world performance.

The biggest unknown right now is on the software side. While Alibaba is understandably

it can meet AI hardware needs in-house, the company has not disclosed details about frameworks, toolchains, or compatibility with existing model stacks. Until independent benchmarks and developer support materialize, the PPU’s parity with Nvidia’s hardware is just a claim backed by Chinese state TV and endorsed by the Chinese government.

Follow

, or

, to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist.  Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.