Huawei, together with a Chinese AI company, has managed to develop a GPU that is on the same performance level as the Nvidia A100.

Chinese AI company HKUST Xunfei says it has worked with Huawei to develop an AI chip that can compete with Nvidia hardware. China is effectively cut off from powerful Nvidia accelerators due to US embargo rules. In theory, trade restrictions on chip-making materials should ensure that the Chinese do not have the means to immediately compete with the western chip industry. If the claim is true, Chinese companies appear to be doing better than expected with their plan.

Specifically, the GPU would offer similar performance to the Nvidia A100. The A100 is the predecessor of the Nvidia H100 and, until its introduction, the most powerful AI chip in the world. Even now that the Nvidia H100 is available, the A100 remains a popular and powerful accelerator. The unnamed Chinese chip is said to be able to smoothly run GPT-3 and GPT-4 level language models.

Chinese ChatGPT

The AI ​​company immediately used the GPUs to train its own model. An alternative to ChatGPT that understands both English and Chinese is to be introduced at the end of October. Expectations are immediately dampened: we shouldn’t expect the same level as ChatGPT at launch.

The information required to verify the claim is missing. It seems that despite the sanctions, China and Huawei are on balance capable of going through with their plan. There is no doubt that they have a delaying effect. Despite the performance of the Nvidia A100, this chip is from 2020. The Chinese companies have at best managed to match the performance of a powerful, but three-year-old accelerator.