Alibaba purchases C-Sky for China-made CPU IP core

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01:22

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announced on Friday a straight acquisition of C-SKY Microsystems Co., Ltd. (“C-SKY Microsystems”), the only embedded CPU volume provider in Chinese mainland with its own instruction set architecture (ISA).

C-SKY is an integrated circuit design house dedicated to 32-bit high performance low-power embedded CPU and chip architecture licensing.

“The acquisition of C-SKY is a crucial draw for Alibaba’s IP Core and chips blueprint,” said Zhang Jianfeng, CTO of Alibaba.

Enabling IP Core manufacturing is the first step to realizing independence for China’s microchip industry. China spent 230 billion US dollars importing microchips in 2016, doubling the amount spent on crude oil imports.

Heavily relying on foreign technology has put Chinese companies in a dicey predicament. A case in point is the recent US banning of American companies selling components to leading Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp for seven years for violating the terms of a sanctions violation case.

Since 25 to 30 percent of components used in ZTE's products are imported from the US, ZTE has only one or two months to find a resolution to the problem before stocks run out.

The case highlights how China's domestic semiconductor industry must step up research and development to reduce its reliance on foreign technology.

For years, Chinese companies have been developing microchips with full intellectual properties.

For example, Alibaba has set up a microchip technology team for AI chip development while investing in other companies like Cambricon, Barefoot Networks, Kneron, ASR, and DeePhi Tech.

C-SKY Microsystems has developed 7 types of embedded CPUs covering a wide range of embedded applications including smart devices in Internet of Things (IoT), digital audio & video, information security, network and communications, industrial control and automotive electronics.

Under the integrated cloud-based framework provided by Alibaba, C-SKY Microsystems researches and develops next-generation CPU, SoC platforms and software systems to support secured and low-cost end-to-end access from edge devices to clouds.