China’s Huawei is developing its own chips to replace Nvidia’s high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) chips in response to the U.S. government’s regulations on semiconductor exports, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 27th, citing sources.
According to the source, Huawei contacted Chinese technology companies in the early stages of developing its latest AI chip “Ascend 910D” and will receive its first sample product as early as late May, WSJ said.
WSJ reported that Huawei expects its latest chip to have stronger performance than Nvidia’s flagship AI chip, ‘H100’.
Huawei’s “Ascend 910D” appears to be a next-generation chip that connects the previously developed AI chips “910B” and “910C.”
Citing sources, Reuters reported on the 21st that Huawei has developed a 910C product that makes two AI chip 910B processors into one package and plans to distribute 910C samples late last year to receive orders and supply them in large quantities starting next month.
WSJ quoted a source as saying that Huawei will ship more than 800,000 910B and 910C chips to private AI developers such as China’s state-owned telecommunications company and TikTok parent company ByteDance this year.
For years, the US government has been regulating exports of advanced semiconductors to China. Nvidia’s “H100,” which is currently considered the best-performing AI chip produced in large quantities, has banned exports to China before its launch in 2022.
NVIDIA has been manufacturing and selling H20 chips, which have lower performance than H100 chips, to China to avoid U.S. regulations, but the U.S. Department of Commerce recently decided to limit H20’s exports to China.
“The technological advancement of Huawei, one of China’s leading technology companies, shows how resilient the Chinese semiconductor industry is despite Washington’s regulations on China,” the WSJ said.
JENNIFER KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
