By Jin Yingying
The 2022 Apsara Conference held in Hangzhou's Xihu district from Nov 3 to 5, has gained widespread attention. Created by Alibaba Cloud, the Apsara Conference is an annual event showcasing how technology and innovation can be applied to reshaping businesses.
Entitled with "Computing, Drives, Future", this year's event included two main forums, 60 sub-forums and summits, and a variety of panorama exhibitions. The event in its 14th edition featured discussions from world-leading innovators and tech experts, significant breakthroughs and product announcements.
Over 20 academicians, scholars, industrial leaders, and enterprise executives attended the event and shared their insights into the digital industry and technologies, including cloud computing, chips, next-generation networks, artificial intelligence, industrial digitization, and small-and medium-sized enterprise development.
In a press release on Nov 3, the Hangzhou-based Alibaba Cloud announced that its first self-developed container-oriented CUP Yitian 710 has been put into a large-scale commercial use. By being equipped with the Yitian 710, the performance-to-price ratio of computing power has been increased by more than 30%, and power consumption reduced by 60%.
A variety of futuristic technologies and cutting-edge sci-tech products were also on display. Armed with virtual reality devices, audiences were able to take a close-up look at troves of artifacts unearthed at the Sanxingdui Ruins dating back 3,000 years. They have also immersed themselves in the simulated imperial palace of the Tang dynasty powered by the automatic 3D space creation and visual localization technology from DAMO Academy's XR Lab.
A bicycle equipped with the Tianji chip, a neuromorphic chip developed by Tsinghua University, the Tianjiable can achieve automatic balancing, obstacle avoidance, obstacle crossing, target tracking, voice command recognition, and autonomous decision-making. Tianji was featured on the cover of the world's top academic journal Nature in 2019 as the first Chinese technology to be featured in this top journal. There were more than 30 breakthrough technologies from more than a dozen top Chinese universities and research institutions, such as brain-like chips, bionic robots, fabric displays, the first DNA storage prototype, structural color, and so on.