Huawei is preparing to test a new Ascend 910D AI processor, which the company hopes will be able to replace some of the high-performance chips from American tech giant Nvidia on the domestic market.
Image source: Huawei Technologies
Huawei has already begun talks with Chinese tech companies to test the new AI chip, The Wall Street Journal reports. The first samples of the processor will arrive for testing at the end of May. However, the development is still in the early stages, and a series of tests will be needed to evaluate its performance. At the same time, Huawei expects that the Ascend 910D will outperform the Nvidia H100 chip, which is widely used for AI training.
Earlier, the US tightened export restrictions on supplies of Nvidia H20 chips to China, which opened up additional opportunities for Huawei and other local manufacturers, which, despite sanctions, continue to strengthen China’s position in the semiconductor industry. Huawei has become one of the leaders in the development of domestic analogues of Nvidia chips and has proven its ability to bypass US restrictions by releasing the flagship Mate 60 smartphone with a Chinese processor. Its presentation in 2023 during a visit to China by then US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo caused concern in Washington.
This year, Huawei plans to ship more than 800,000 Ascend 910B and 910C chips to state-owned telecoms and private AI developers, including TikTok owner ByteDance. Following the H20 restrictions, some customers are already discussing increasing orders for the Ascend 910C version.
While Chinese chips are still several years behind their Western counterparts, Huawei and other local manufacturers are finding ways to boost their performance by combining multiple chips into a single system. In April, the company introduced the CloudMatrix 384 computing system, which analysts say even outperforms Nvidia’s flagship solutions in some tasks, despite their higher power consumption.
However, large-scale production of such chips remains a problem due to the fact that Huawei lacks access to Taiwan’s largest chipmaker TSMC, and China’s SMIC cannot purchase the most advanced equipment. “However, even if a single Huawei GPU is a third weaker than Nvidia Blackwell, their total number compensates for this gap,” the SemiAnalysis report notes. Experts also acknowledge that there are problems with energy efficiency, but they are not critical for China.