Alibaba Cloud claims its modular data center architecture can reduce build times by as much as 50 percent.

First reported by The Register, the cloud provider shared details of its Cube DC 5.0 modular data center architecture at its annual Apsara conference.

Cube DC 5.0 is described as a prefabricated modular design that uses a wind-liquid hybrid cooling system, all-direct current power distribution architecture, and smart management system.

Details about the technologies are limited, though The Register speculates that the "wind-liquid hybrid cooling system" likely uses cold plate cooling techniques.

DCD has reached out to Alibaba for further information.

CEO Eddie Wu said at the conference that Alibaba is "investing heavily in building an AI infrastructure for the future. These enhancements are not just about keeping up with AI demands but about setting a global standard for efficiency and sustainability."

Beyond the Cube DC 5.0, Alibaba has released more than 100 large language models, ranging from 0.5 to 72 billion parameters in size, to the global open-source community.

“Today marks a significant milestone as we launch our most expansive open-source initiative to date," said Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. "This initiative is set to empower developers and corporations of all sizes, enhancing their ability to leverage AI technologies and further stimulating the growth of the open-source community. We remain committed to investing in advanced AI infrastructure to foster the widespread adoption of generative AI technologies across different industries."

Alibaba Cloud has also launched a PAI AI Scheduler with integrated model training and inference, a scheduling engine to help improve computing resource management.

Alibaba is currently dealing with the aftermath of a fire at a data center that hosted Availability Zone C of its Singapore region.

The company saw revenue for cloud computing hit $3.64 billion in its Q2 2024 financial results, with Alibaba putting much of this growth onto AI demand. CEO Eddie Wu said during the August earnings call: "There's very, very robust demand among our customers for AI and AI-relevant products. Demand is still far from being satisfied.

"If you look at the industry as a whole, demand for CPU-based traditional cloud computing is relatively limited, where most of the growth is now focused on GPU-based AI product development."