Shortage of advanced chips will not affect China’s AI goals: Huawei

Huawei doesn’t feel that the shortage of advanced chips can impact China’s AI goals. The company uttered these words at a recently held event in Shanghai. It also pointed out major steps that the country should take to pace ahead in the AI field.

The CEO of Huawei Cloud – Zhang Pingan attended the World AI Conference in Shanghai on Thursday (July 4). While delivering the keynote, he cited that the lack of AI chips won’t pull back China from its ambitions towards AI technology.

Zhang said that though Huawei is facing limited computing power in the region, this doesn’t make it weak. The company can’t completely depend on advanced manufacturing processes as the ‘one and only’ foundation for its AI infrastructure.

“If we believe that not having the most advanced AI chips means we will be unable to lead in AI, then we need to abandon this viewpoint.” – Zhang Pingan.

Huawei Cloud CEO has said these words amid the news of AI chipset production problems. A recent headline read that the company is struggling with a lack of AI chips yield rate at SMIC foundry. Four out of five chips appeared to be defective.

Due to tighter U.S. restrictions on advanced chip-making tools, the tech maker has to rely upon the outdated machinery that now started to fail. Huawei also has to compete with rivals like Nvidia that are looking to capture the Chinese market.

Many Chinese firms are supporting Huawei by purchasing Ascend AI chips rather than Nvidia A100. Yet the lack of Huawei advanced AI chips might cause new partners to reluctantly turn to other options available in the market.

Zhang further talks about cloud innovation. He hopes that advanced and innovative cloud products can pay back for the shortage of AI chips in the native region.

According to him, innovation in other infrastructures such as the Cloud, network solutions, and more can help address the AI chip lack issues. A combined approach can help reduce energy consumption as well as boost efficiency.

But how long the shortage of advanced AI chips will persist and what measures Huawei will take to overcome these problems would be worth looking forward to.

[Source – Reuters]