Chinese electronics giant Huawei Technologies has launched its new artificial intelligence chip to compete with Nvidia's powerhouse H100 processor. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the company has been testing the Ascend 910C with major players in China's tech sector, including ByteDance, Baidu and China Mobile.
The development comes after a series of US sanctions barred the Asian giant from acquiring advanced chip manufacturing technologies.
While Nvidia's current top-of-the-line chip is the NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPU, Nvidia's H100 is far and away the most widely distributed AI chip in the world, with millions sold and a long waiting list. The established powerhouse is also a target of rival chipmaker AMD.
The Ascend 910C represents a leap forward from the previous 910B, which was equivalent to Nvidia's older A100 chip—a step down from the H-series. If it delivers significantly improved performance, Huawei could be on the verge of a major breakthrough in the technology industry, ensuring a rebirth after its CEO said five years ago it was facing a “live or die” period.
Potential Huawei customers are already lining up to place orders. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company is looking to sell 70,000 chips, the total price of which will reach 2 billion dollars. The company is reportedly gearing up to ship the hardware in October.
However, some analysts have questioned Huawei's ability to meet expectations, saying US sanctions could still hamper its progress.
These sanctions imposed by the Trump administration have been a double-edged sword for the AI chip market. While Nvidia has limited its ability to sell high-end chips to Chinese customers, it has also encouraged domestic innovation. Nvidia's response—the H20 chip designed for the Chinese market—is already facing stiff competition from local alternatives, including Huawei's cheap Ascend 910B.
In response, Huawei is taking matters into its own hands by building facilities to manufacture and manufacture semiconductor devices on Chinese soil, Bloomberg reported last month. The company is said to be working with Chinese semiconductor firms to produce high-bandwidth memory chips locally.
Nivea, on the other hand, is not standing still. The company is developing a next-generation, sanctions-friendly B20 chip based on the Blackwell architecture. Intel is making a move with Gaudy 3 processors designed specifically for the Chinese market.
For now, Huawei remains tight-lipped about the exact specifications of the Ascend 910C. Huawei previously reported that it was 80% more efficient than Nvidia's A100 in AI training tasks and 20% more efficient in discrete-demand tasks.
Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt.
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