Alibaba drafts roadmap for research in frontier technology

Alibaba Group Holding has laid out its development roadmap for frontier technologies, including quantum computing and AI chips, on the opening day of the Cloud Computing Conference 2018. The conference, which is being attended by technology leaders, experts and industry luminaries, is scheduled for four days through September 22 at Alibaba’s home base of Hangzhou.

Alibaba DAMO Academy, a global initiative by Alibaba to lead technology and science research, has unveiled plans to develop disruptive technologies over the next five years. The technologies are developed to support the firm’s rapidly growing cloud and IoT businesses, as well as to explore new commercial applications in various industries – from logistics, materials to pharmaceuticals – that require greater computing power to achieve technology breakthrough –

· Quantum Computing: The Academy has embarked on developing its own quantum processors. The Hangzhou-based quantum hardware team is developing high-precision, multiple-qubit superconducting quantum processors. In the meantime, the Academy will continue its efforts in driving quantum development. This includes building cloud-accessed, quantum-classical heterogenous systems for delivering quantum computing power as a utility, and searching for super-fast quantum-classical hybrid algorithms to solve fundamental problems in machine learning, optimization, and physics simulations. The expansion to hardware reflects the Academy’s conviction that the co-development of hardware and application will expedite the realization of quantum computing’s revolutionary potentials....Read More