Ascend 910B AI chip outstrips Nvidia A100 by 20% in tests: Huawei

Ascend 910B AI chip is far ahead of Nvidia A100 in many aspects, says a Huawei executive after recently performing a few tests between the two processors. He also notes that in some cases, the China-made chipset can be 20% better than its rival.

Wang Tao – the COO of Huawei Ascend and Kunpeng Ecosystem attended the Nanjing World Semiconductor Conference on Thursday. During his keynote, he mentioned that Ascend 910B doesn’t differ much from the Nvidia A100 processor.

Some tests show that the Huawei Ascend 910B AI chip can offer 80% of Nvidia A100 efficiency for large language model training. In a few other experiments, the former outstripped the latter by 20%, with better computing power performance.

Huawei-Nvidia chip war continues with interesting turns every day as the latter struggles to chase its customers in China. Major reasons for this clash are high competition from Chinese contenders and the strict U.S. export trade regulations.

Nvidia struggles!

Following the U.S. sanctions, Nvidia brought in low-efficient chips in the Chinese market. It shipped 90% of the 500,000 AI chips, giving only 6% of the ground to Huawei in China last year. But the scenario changed as the US tightened its rules.

Nvidia AI chip (Image Credits: Nvidia)

“The company is facing a lot more competition in China due to limitations on the technology it can sell there.” – said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Nvidia even tried to tempt Chinese consumers via price drops and huge discounts on its newly launched AI chips. Although things proved in vain on this matter.

Ascend 910B on the other hand, constantly gains popularity in the market and has over 40 hardware partners, 1600 software partners plus 2900 AI app solutions. Yet some analysts believe that Huawei will require high-end techs to build advanced AI chips instead of relying on old, stocked equipment.

Despite the lack of many tech-pack components, Huawei Ascend 910B is fighting well against its rival AI chips in the Chinese market. This is because Chinese consumers started supporting their native firms rather than foreign companies or goods.

AI box is another reason which has contributed to the Huawei AI chip’s popularity. Things could become more favorable for the Chinese OEM in the time ahead.

“In some other tests, Ascend chips can beat the A100 by 20 percent. There is not much difference between the computing power performances of the Huawei Ascend 910B and Nvidia A100 in large AI model training.” – said Wang Tao.

Huawei vs Nvidia: Chip War

[Source – SCMP]