Huawei Technologies has unveiled hardware that it said could deliver world-class computing power without using Nvidia’s advanced chips, in a breakthrough that could potentially end the supply chokehold that constrains China’s aspirations in artificial intelligence (AI). Huawei said it had developed the “world’s most powerful” supernode computing cluster using local chips, while also disclosing plans to launch upgraded Ascend AI chips over the next three years. The moves provide a boost to the country’s efforts to build self-reliance in AI computing and offer an alternative to the U.S.-led AI hardware ecosystem. “Huawei is seeking to build a ‘supernode + cluster’ computing solution using chip manufacturing processes available in China to meet the growing compute needs,” Rotating Chairman Eric Xu said at the company’s annual Connect Conference in Shanghai.
Tilly Zhang, China Technology Analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics in Beijing, said that “Nvidia’s product quality is still superior, but China’s advanced chip manufacturing may have reached a turning point in that it is ready to compete openly in the market instead of being just a hidden project. In short, China still needs U.S. chips for now, but probably in a much less significant way.” Su Lian Jye, Chief Analyst at research firm Omdia, said Huawei was showing its “relentless desire to innovate” by enabling its customers to upgrade their infrastructure. Huawei’s new developments come as Beijing is pressing the country’s tech giants to stop buying the chips that Nvidia tailor-made for China, which were designed to comply with U.S. export restrictions. A few months ago Washington gave Nvidia permission to sell the H20, an AI chip tailor-made for Chinese clients, because it complied with U.S. export restrictions. Nvidia received the greenlight on the condition that it pay 15% of H20's sales revenue to the U.S. government.
U.S.-sanctioned Huawei is playing a leading role in finding solutions that can empower China’s AI ambitions without relying on technologies from the U.S. Since the company was blacklisted by Washington in 2019 over national security concerns, it has kept its chip development plans close to its chest, leaving the market guessing about its progress. Xu, however, put Huawei’s Ascend chip plans under the spotlight. “Ascend chips are the foundation of our AI computing strategy,” he said.
Following the Ascend 910C, which has been available since the first quarter of this year, Huawei will release the Ascend 950 series, including the 950PR and 950DT, over the next year. Furthermore, Huawei said it would incorporate in-house-developed high-bandwidth memory (HBM) into these chips. The Ascend 960 and Ascend 970 are expected in 2027 and 2028, in a timetable that runs in parallel with AI chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, the South China Morning Post reports.
