Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, fully migrated all of Alibaba Group’s systems and operations onto the cloud ahead of the world’s largest shopping festival. Use of 100% cloud-native technologies during the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival reduced computing resources by 50% for every 10,000 transactions compared to last year.

Computing efficiency was also greatly improved with a boost of 20% in technology deployment efficiency and 30% in CPU resource utilization.

“We are committed to offering ‘green computing power’ to meet the exponential demand from our customers for a low-carbon digital transition, and to drive the sustainable and inclusive development of our society,” said Li Cheng, CTO, Alibaba Group. “Alibaba Group’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival is an important opportunity to continue pushing our boundaries with green technology and smart innovation.”

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Alibaba Cloud used green technologies such as liquid cooling and wind energy at its hyper-scale data centers to make 11.11 a more sustainable shopping festival. This year, the use of renewable energy in Alibaba’s Zhangbei County data center helped to reduce carbon emissions by over 26,000 tons, equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by one million trees annually.

Hanguang 800

The scaled deployment of Hanguang 800, the first AI inference chip launched by Alibaba Cloud in 2019, significantly improved the efficiency of product search and recommendation during the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival. The algorithm performance for the search function on the Taobao marketplace improved by 200%, while energy costs were reduced by 58%.

Alibaba Cloud’s proprietary large-scale AI model M6 also made its debut during this year’s festival, which improved AI-intensive operations such as AI-powered apparel design. By drastically shortening the time required to design new clothes from multiple months to less than two weeks, M6 drives efficiency improvements in the production chain. It is estimated that M6-enabled designs, along with incorporating the use of more eco-friendly materials, can reduce the carbon footprint of T-shirt manufacturing by more than 30%.

Alibaba Cloud said it aims to help merchants make online shopping more engaging and inclusive for customers through new innovations and proven technologies.