Huawei's Ascend 910B is seen as a viable alternative to Nvidia’s offerings in China, where U.S. sanctions restrict Nvidia from selling high-performance AI chips. Huawei is focusing on refining the collaboration between hardware and software components, integrating its Ascend hardware with software through the exclusive Compute Architecture for Neural Networks platform. However, compared to Nvidia’s expansive CUDA ecosystem, Huawei has considerable ground to cover.
Key takeaways:
- Nvidia views Huawei as a potential rival in the AI chip sector, particularly in China, due to the development of Huawei's Ascend 910B AI chip.
- Huawei is reportedly enhancing its chip operations by forming alliances with local suppliers, despite US sanctions attempting to hamper its semiconductor efforts.
- The Ascend 910B AI chip, produced by the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) in China, matches or slightly surpasses the AI processing capabilities of Nvidia’s A100 GPU, according to research firm SemiAnalysis.
- Despite US sanctions, Nvidia is still developing AI chips for the Chinese market, but these are less powerful versions due to export laws preventing the sale of high-performance hardware to China.