According to The Information, the Chinese ByteDance, which owns the popular social network TikTok, is working on releasing its own AI chips. Two types of chips will begin to be produced at TSMC by 2026. It is assumed that its own developments will allow the Chinese IT giant to get rid of dependence on suppliers like NVIDIA.
It is generally accepted that NVIDIA solutions are used by the majority of companies involved in the development of AI systems. However, it is quite difficult to obtain advanced accelerators due to American sanctions, which have been tightened more than once and extended even to weakened accelerators. Because of this, ByteDance has to look for alternatives.
The export of chips from the United States and other countries using American technology has been repeatedly limited, and in June information appeared that ByteDance was collaborating with Broadcom on a 5nm solution that complies with all restrictions – it will be produced by Taiwan’s TSMC. ByteDance was also reported to have purchased Ascend 910B chips developed and sold by Huawei last year. However, according to The Information, ByteDance has still ordered 200 thousand NVIDIA H20 accelerators for more than $2 billion. They are much easier and more convenient to work with than Huawei solutions.
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The development of ByteDance’s own chips is explained by the company’s management’s growing interest in AI technologies – they are used in many of the IT giant’s solutions, including TikTok’s recommendation systems. The development of our own products will improve the performance of ByteDance systems in model training and inference. In China, not only ByteDance is working on its own solutions in the field of AI accelerators, but also, for example, Baidu. The Kunlun 3 AI accelerator will also be produced by TSMC. At the same time, Baodi has much more experience in developing accelerators. Starting in 2010 with FPGAs, by 2020 it moved on to creating ASICs.
In August 2022, ByteDance introduced the AI-based chatbot Doubao, which became the main competitor of Ernie Bot (developed by Baidu) in China. In May, under the Doubao brand umbrella, ByteDance introduced large language models (LLMs) aimed at enterprise clients. The models are relatively inexpensive compared to competing products that offer similar functionality.