Huawei moving forward in AI chipset development to compete with Nvidia

Huawei and Nvidia are the top-most rivals in the U.S.-China AI chipset battle. While the U.S. chipmaker has advanced technology to build robust AI processors, the Chinese tech giant is also gradually moving forward in efficient AI chip-making.

Despite U.S. restrictions, Huawei is making efforts in the AI chipset field to compete with rivals like Nvidia. The company has been silently working on a new AI chip – Ascend 910C for a long time. The processor will likely go official in the next month.

New Ascend 910C

Ascend 910C will probably act as a strong alternative to the Nvidia B20. It can easily give a tough spot to the H100 chip in performance and efficiency, as per some tests.

With the new AI processor, Huawei aims to fill the gaps in Chinese AI technology. Due to foreign export controls, the company is unable to use advanced equipment to build powerful AI chips. Yet it continued to pace in the AI field with its own techs.

Ascend 910B

On the other hand, the previous AI chips like Ascend 910B claim to edge out Nvidia A100 chips by 20%. It can deliver 80% of Nvidia A100 efficiency for LLMs’ training.

This further indicates the reduction of China’s dependency on US chip producers. Following the ban, Nvidia is restricted from selling high-end chips in China. As a result, it introduced low-efficient AI chips to continue its sales in the region.

Being low-quality processors, the Nvidia chips didn’t satisfy industrial users much. In such scenarios, the upcoming Ascend 910C could be a boon in China.

U.S. Ban: an opportunity?

Huawei also gives credits for its achievements in AI chipset development to the U.S. ban! Yes, the company believes that the U.S. sanctions made it self-reliant in AI technology, computing power, semiconductors, and other high-end solutions.

U.S. authorities blacklisted Huawei from its trade market in 2019 due to security concerns. As a result, the company was unable to access any tech-pack chipmaking tool to build its processors. Though it was a major issue, the ban also did some good to the company.

Improvements ahead!

The new Huawei is more innovative than its previous version. It looks for creative and efficient solutions to build its chips, hardware, and software. Also, these products are mostly free from U.S. components and rely on self-developed parts.

Note that Huawei’s new AI chip is still struggling with certain issues as well as production challenges. However, the constant pace of the company shows that it will soon overcome these obstacles.

Huawei moving forward in AI chipset development to compete with Nvidia (Image Credits: HuaweiCentral)