Huawei has begun shipping upgraded, powerful CloudMatrix 384 clusters to data centers serving Chinese tech companies cut off from Nvidia chip supplies due to U.S. sanctions.
Huawei has now shipped more than a dozen CloudMatrix 384 systems. Industry analysts were impressed by the speed with which Huawei developed and shipped CloudMatrix systems, which include 384 AI accelerators and can provide enough computing power to train AI models and then run the corresponding services. These clusters outperform Nvidia systems, SemiAnalysis acknowledged.
In April, Washington banned Nvidia from shipping even its H20 accelerators to China, which were specially designed to comply with sanctions, warning that this would reduce its revenue by $5.5 billion. In response, Huawei accelerated the development of its own chips to help local tech companies compete with developers from other countries. CloudMatrix includes 384 Huawei Ascend 910C processors, which are less powerful than the current Nvidia GB200, but the Chinese cluster as a whole offers more computing power than Nvidia NVL72 systems based on 72 GB200 chips. According to Huawei itself, CloudMatrix 384 is 67% more productive than NVL72, and more than three times more powerful than its American competitor in total memory. To compensate for the lower performance of individual chips, Huawei used its expertise in telecommunications and applied advanced networking technologies in its clusters.
But the CloudMatrix 384 also has significant drawbacks. Due to the larger number of chips, one such system consumes significantly more power than Nvidia NVL72, and programming Huawei systems requires more effort from developers than interacting with Nvidia CUDA – labor costs increase three to five times. Given that China does not experience a shortage of electricity and labor resources, the CloudMatrix 384 cluster seems to be a viable solution for customers who are unable to purchase Nvidia equipment. The cost of Huawei CloudMatrix 384 is approximately 60 million yuan ($8.2 million), but the exact price depends on the individual contract. The base price of Nvidia NVL72 is set at about $3 million – it can vary depending on the manufacturer of finished equipment and the needs of the client.