Huawei is distributing the first samples of the Ascend 910C GPU. With the help of its own government and from an unexpected source, Huawei wants to gain market share from Nvidia.

The first test samples of Huawei’s Ascend 910C GPU are ready to be shipped to local customers, Chinese news media reports. The AI ​​chips are intended to be an alternative to Nvidia’s GPUs and are said to be comparable in performance to the Nvidia H100, although details about the chip are rather sparse. Previously, the chips had to struggle with unstable software.

Replace Nvidia

The Chinese government is already ready to give Huawei a boost. Chinese companies are encouraged to buy as many chips as possible from local farmers. The guideline serves as advice: There is currently no talk of a ban on American chips in China. Chinese companies know they’d better follow their government’s advice as best as possible.

Huawei expects to be able to officially deliver the chips from October. Huawei wants to compete with Nvidia in its home country. Nvidia is not allowed to sell its most advanced GPUs in China due to US trade restrictions. The US government wants to further tighten these restrictions and also include lower-performance Nvidia chips. More Chinese companies will therefore have to look for alternatives: This plays into Huawei’s hands in order to gain market share.

On your own two feet

China needs to cover its own AI beans and it seems to be doing so more and more. Chinese researchers are said to have succeeded in developing a generative AI model across multiple data centers. This is a feat that has never been achieved anywhere else in the world, considering how complex it is to combine different types of GPUs in one data center, let alone multiple ones.

China may not currently have the most powerful GPUs, but they know how to deal with this shortage in innovative ways. The researchers have apparently managed to combine several GPUs. The limited stocks of higher-performance GPUs are combined with lower-performance GPUs, of which larger stocks are available.

It is not known how powerful the model developed using this technology actually is. It shows that Chinese tech companies have learned to stand on their own two feet and that the gap may not be as big as the US government hopes.