China Telecom reportedly chose Huawei AI chips over Nvidia

U.S.-China war is indirectly helping Huawei to expand its AI chip value in the native region. A new report states that China Telecom has turned to Huawei AI chips for its two large AI models, sidelining Nvidia, AMD, and other foreign chipmakers.

China Telecom is one of the world’s largest mobile network service providers and the second-largest wireless carrier in China. Besides providing useful services and seamless experiences, it also develops large AI models with advanced capabilities.

The telecom recently developed two large language models that were trained using Chinese AI chips. One of these is TeleChat2-115B while the other one is unnamed.

In a statement, the telecom operator said that its open-source large AI models rely on tens of thousands of domestically produced chips. One of these models has 1 trillion parameters. The effectiveness of AI models mostly depends on the parameter scales.

The AI Institute at China Telecom shared the news via WeChat and further stated: “… the achievement indicates that China has truly realized total self-sufficiency in domestic LLM training.”

Huawei AI Chips

China Telecom didn’t reveal the chip supplier’s name. But it has a cooperation with Huawei. Both firms have developed several network solutions that can benefit both operators and consumers, providing a rich and efficient network experience.

Earlier, the telecom operator mentioned that it is making new AI models with Huawei Ascend chips. China has already started sidelining Nvidia and other foreign chipmakers to a greater extent, promoting native suppliers and self-reliance.

This will also help to counter the U.S. sanctions that have been a major hurdle in China’s progress in the chip field. Thus, China Telecom would likely have used Huawei chips for its newly developed AI models over Nvidia and any other U.S. alternative.

Apart from Huawei, another AI chip supplier could be the Cambricon. These companies would have helped China Telecom in building the new AI models with immense efficiency.

Huawei has started sampling the new Ascend 910C chips to some Chinese AI firms. The company is expected to officially introduce the new processor this month. Ascend 910B is expected to extend the Chinese customers for the company in the high-end AI chip market.

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