March 28, 2024 – MediaTek Announces Deep Collaboration with Alibaba Cloud
MediaTek has announced a deep partnership with Alibaba Cloud, successfully deploying a compact version of the Tongyi Qianwen AI Model on their Dimensity 9300 mobile platform. This deployment also supports the Dimensity 8300 platform, enabling offline, real-time, and accurate multi-turn human-machine conversational interactions. The two companies plan to join forces in building generative AI software and hardware ecosystems for app developers and device manufacturers, based on the MediaTek Dimensity mobile platforms with more parameter versions of the Tongyi models, exploring new opportunities in AI Agent services for the mass market.
Dr. Li Yanji, Vice President of MediaTek’s Wireless Communications Business Unit, states, “Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi series AI models are leaders in the field of AI. We look forward to providing app developers and end customers with stronger hardware and software solutions through our cooperation, which will also promote the rapid development of generative AI on devices and the ecosystem of AI applications and services, bringing exciting AI product experiences to users.”
Xu Dong, Head of Alibaba’s Tongyi Lab Business, says, “Edge AI is one of the most important application scenarios for large models, but there are many challenges such as difficulty in hardware-software adaptation and incomplete development environments. The collaboration between Alibaba Cloud and MediaTek has solved a series of technical and engineering challenges, effectively integrating large models into mobile chipsets and setting a successful example for Model-on-Chip deployment at the edge. We believe this will lead developers to create a wealth of innovative and practical AI applications.”
Generative AI Deployment at the Edge, Joint Optimization for Enhanced Efficiency
Compared to applications and services that deploy generative AI solely in the cloud, hybrid edge-cloud AI significantly leverages the computing power of end devices. This brings notable advantages in operational costs, user data security, real-time responsiveness, and personalized user experiences. Sharing insights into industry trends, MediaTek and Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Lab have worked closely to adapt and optimize the Tongyi Large Model for use in devices with the Dimensity mobile platform, empowering these devices to offer safer, faster, more reliable, and differentiated experiences.
The Dimensity 9300 chipset integrates MediaTek’s seventh-generation AI processor APU 790, which features a hardware-based generative AI engine. This enables the device to run AI language models with parameter counts in the billions – up to a maximum of 33 billion – and supports the “skill expansion” technology NeuroPilot Fusion for generative AI models. The processing speed for generative AI on this chipset is eight times that of its predecessor, with the capability to generate images within a second. Furthermore, MediaTek’s AI development platform, NeuroPilot, has built a rich AI ecosystem, supporting the world’s major AI large models, with a complete toolchain that includes support for NeuroPilot Fusion and LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) fusion technology. Combined with MediaTek’s robust AI computing power, this aids developers to optimize and transform models faster, significantly improving the edge processing efficiency of large models, and imbuing them with more comprehensive capabilities.
The Tongyi Qianwen is Alibaba Cloud’s proprietary LLM foundation model, offering parameter sizes including 100 billion in its 2.0 version, as well as open-source versions with 72 billion, 14 billion, 7 billion, 4 billion, 1.8 billion, and 500 million parameters. It also includes the multimodal Qwen-VL visual understanding model and the Qwen-Audio audio model. The Qwen series was the first self-developed large model open-sourced in the Chinese market, achieving outstanding results in more than ten industry benchmark evaluations and topping the influential Hugging Face leaderboard globally. The Tongyi model family has now formed a matrix of foundational and industry models, being among the first to pass the national large model standard evaluation, scoring full marks in six out of eleven tests in professional AI model reports.
MediaTek maintains a long-term, close partnership with Alibaba Cloud. The two have completed edge adaptation for the compact version of the Tongyi Qianwen large model on the Dimensity mobile platform and are now leveraging the developer ecosystem to promote widespread adoption in edge AI applications. Additionally, MediaTek’s model center and toolkit for developers will integrate the Tongyi Qianwen model series, supporting a broader range of scenario applications based on the Tongyi large models.
MediaTek and Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Qianwen Model: Pioneering AI Agent Applications at the Edge
AI agents, representing the most exciting development trajectory for generative large models – often referred to as the “next station for large models” – have been committed to by both parties in their latest announcement. They plan to launch a joint exploration of AI agent solutions, integrating the strong hardware and AI computation capabilities of the MediaTek Dimensity mobile platform with the advanced large model technology and developing tool platforms from Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Qianwen. This support enables smart devices to efficiently perform natural language understanding, complex decision-making, and personalized service generation at the edge, aiming to create a next-generation smart terminal application ecosystem with context awareness, autonomous learning, and real-time interaction features.
In the future, with the joint efforts of MediaTek and Alibaba Cloud, users could articulate their needs at home, and AI agents powered by the Dimensity platforms and Tongyi models could autonomously establish and fulfill tasks, making the dream of intelligent living a reality. Furthermore, the collaboration opens up broader innovation opportunities for developers and device manufacturers.
With generative AI becoming a driving force in the next wave of technological revolution and industrial transformation, MediaTek will continue to work with Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Lab to accelerate the deployment of generative AI at the edge, cultivate application scenarios and ecosystems for generative AI, and collectively develop AI agent product experiences for the future. Their efforts aim to better support the implementation of AI applications across thousands of industries, ensuring that technology benefits everyday life.