Tech war: Huawei’s AI chip capabilities under intense scrutiny after market leader Nvidia taps it as potential rival
- Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip, already available on the mainland, is said to be on par in terms of computing power with Nvidia’s sought-after A100 GPU
- The Chinese-developed chip can compete with Nvidia’s A100 in terms of powering AI algorithms, according to semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis
With Nvidia currently unable to ship its advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) to mainland China under Washington’s export restrictions, a new AI chipset from Huawei has emerged as a replacement for the US firm’s Chinese products, industry insiders and analysts say.
The Huawei Ascend 910B, already available via distributor channels on the mainland, is considered by some industry participants to be on par in terms of computing power with Nvidia’s sought-after A100 data-centre GPUs. Huawei has not made any public comment on the 910B.
Huawei declined to comment on the matter.
“They’re limited by whatever semiconductor processing technology they have, but they’ll still be able to build very large systems by aggregating many of those chips together,” Huang said.
Amid the increased focus on generative AI in the past year and tighter US sanctions, Huawei and SMIC have allocated more capacity to AI chips, according to a Reuters report last month.
One GPU distributor, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said that the Ascend 910B is “available for order, but supply is really tight at the moment”.
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A server used for AI training and embedded with eight Ascend 910B cards costs around 1.5 million yuan (US$208,395), which is roughly in the same range as A100 server prices quoted in black market channels, according to a separate person familiar with the matter who also declined to be named.
Many analysts and industry professionals are reluctant to comment on the Nvidia and Huawei showdown, although they pointed out that the US chip designer has depth in GPUs and benefits from its software ecosystem CUDA, a computing platform that allows developers to unleash the full potential of semiconductors.
“CUDA is sticky, Nvidia did all of this hard work on its own and is reaping the benefits,” said Brian Colello, technology equity strategist at Morningstar. “Huawei and its software partners will need to build out an ecosystem comparable [to Nvidia’s CUDA] when it comes to tools to build AI models.”
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Despite lagging CUDA’s 2 million-strong list of registered developers, Huawei has its proprietary Compute Architecture for Neural Networks, a platform that connects Ascend hardware and software, crucial to unlocking AI computing power.
Colello said Huawei might have to make similar [big] investments in mainland China to strengthen its software capabilities. He added that perhaps other companies will work on the software libraries, while Huawei focuses on chip design.
“Huawei’s strength is not in the software stack,” said one Shanghai-based tech investor who requested anonymity. “The US sanctions put limits on chip performance and production yields.”