BEIJING, Sept 17 (Reuters) - China Unicom has

built a massive data centre powered by domestically developed

artificial intelligence chips from Alibaba ( BABA ) and other companies,

state broadcaster CCTV said, as Beijing seeks to wean itself off

foreign technologies.

The news comes as U.S. officials voiced national security

concerns at trade talks with China in Madrid this week, aiming

to block shipments of chips and other advanced technology.

Amid the tension China has grown increasingly keen for

domestic firms to switch to homegrown chips, warning them

against use of those made by U.S. giant Nvidia ( NVDA ), on security

grounds.

China Unicom's $390-million data centre, in Xining, the

capital of the western province of Qinghai, will possess

computing capacity of 20,000 petaflops when complete, the

provincial government says on its website.

So far the centre has built 3,579 petaflops using nearly

23,000 domestically made AI chips, CCTV images showed on

Tuesday.

Alibaba's ( BABA ) chip unit T-Head supplied about 72% of

the chips used, with the rest coming from companies such as

MetaX, Biren Tech and Zhonghao Xinying, the broadcaster said.

The company plans to procure additional chips from Tecorigin

(Wuxi), Moore Threads, and Enflame, CCTV said.

Alibaba's ( BABA ) T-Head has also developed an AI chip called the

PPU that features 96 gigabytes of memory and HBM2e, a type of

vertically stacked DRAM chip specially designed for AI

semiconductors.

That positions it as a close competitor to Nvidia's ( NVDA )

H20, the most advanced product the U.S. company is currently

permitted to sell to China, a comparative table in the broadcast

showed.

China Unicom, Alibaba ( BABA ), Biren, MetaX, Enflame, Tecorigin and

Zhonghao Xinying did not immediately respond to Reuters'

requests for comment. Moore Threads declined to comment.

On Monday, Beijing said a preliminary investigation of

Nvidia ( NVDA ) found it had violated anti-monopoly laws.

($1=7.1071 yuan)