Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. might be busy developing its own computer chips for tasks such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, but those plans don’t seem to have put it off from relying on other chipmakers for other uses.

In fact, Alibaba said today at its Yunqi Cloud Computing Conference 2018 in Hangzhou it’s actually strengthening its collaboration with Intel Corp. in a range of “revolutionary technologies” that include hyperscale data centers and network edge deployments.

Among a swath of announcements made by the companies today, Alibaba and Intel said they’re launching a new Joint Edge Computing Platform for enterprises to build “device-to-cloud” systems for the “internet of things.” The idea is to provide a platform for various edge computing scenarios such as industrial manufacturing and smart buildings.

The Joint Edge Computing Platform is based on an open architecture that integrates Intel’s chips and AI technologies with Alibaba’s cloud services and uses computer vision and other forms of AI to transform edge data into business insights, the companies said. The platform has already been deployed by several Chinese firms, they added.

Alibaba will also be using Intel’s latest Xeon Scalable processors and Optane persistent memory technology to power cloud computing workloads during the upcoming “Single’s Day” shopping festival in China. The festival is a huge event comparable to “Black Friday” in the U.S., which generated more than $25 billion in revenue in 2017.

Alibaba said Intel’s tech will power a “key value data access and caching storage system” that’s used by shopping platforms such as Taobao and Tmall. The idea is to use Intel’s technologies to store large amounts of “hot accessible data” in memory caches so as to keep up with the anticipated surge in demand throughout the festival.

The companies have also created an Apsara Stack Industry Alliance in order to build an ecosystem of hybrid cloud products for the Alibaba Cloud Apsara Stack, which is an on-premises hybrid cloud system comparable to Microsoft Corp.’s Azure Stack.

Intel is also joining Alibaba as a strategic partner in the Chinese firm’s AliOS intelligent transportation initiative. The AliOS project aims to create an intelligent road traffic network for autonomous cars that will “realize vehicle-road synergy,” Alibaba said. The companies will collaborate on 5G communications and edge computing using Intel’s processors and Network Edge Virtualization software development kit in order to enable this.

Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc., said Alibaba’s alliance with Intel comes at a crucial time as the race for infrastructure-as-a-service in Asia and IoT on a global scale is reaching a decisive state.

“CIOs need global infrastructures for their next-generation applications and, given their global scope, they also need coverage in Asia,” Mueller said.

The companies will also work together to help with “digital transformation” during the 2020 Olympics Games in Tokyo. Olympic Broadcasting Services, the company responsible for broadcasting television, radio and digital coverage of the games, will work with Alibaba and Intel to “explore a more efficient and reliable delivery pipeline” in order to beam live coverage of the event around the world, including virtual reality content that requires lots of computer processing power.

“The Tokyo Olympics will be a great marketing platform for both companies,” Mueller added.

Image: Alibaba